The Prophet

Working at GTE consisted mostly of desk work or debugging on the Sentry IC Tester (when I had scheduled time). But there were also meetings. Not that many but I do remember one regular interdepartmental meeting - I can't remember exactly what the goal of the meeting was but it was run by a "lab guy", person "A" - a supervisor. I'm sure this person was really smart but just not easy for me to understand - at times it almost sounded like "gobble-gobble" to me. At those times the 2nd in command labster, (person "E") would step in with: "I think what "A" is trying to say is:" and then proceed to actually run the meeting. I thought of person "E" as the prophet (or maybe a translator or management whisperer) who furnished the interface to the incomprehensible person "A".

It was sort of like on Sanford and Son, when the cops, Smitty and Swanny (or Smitty and Hoppy) would show up:

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gyJ-I3A7P4

Swanny and Hoppy were the equivalent of person "A" above. Smitty was the prophet, translating the incomprehensible cop talk to Fred and Lamont (and vice versa).