Flashback a few decades to the days when this pilot fish is a supervisor in the call center for a big mail-order PC company.

"Our agents were privy to a customer's credit card information right in the call tracking system," says fish. "We trusted 600 agents with nearly unlimited access to this customer information without ever a single theft from our people."

But the call center manager decides the operation needs a way to approve replacement parts to be shipped to customers.

That leads to a new process: When a call-center agent is sending a simple part — say, a new mouse or inexpensive sound card — the agent types in his badge number, then must turn his head to get his supervisor's attention.

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