I am confused. Are you confused?

Today, I was, as most days, sitting relatively comfortably in my salaryman chair at my salaryman desk (of which actually only the chair is gray, contrary to a normal salaryman environment), happily working away as I received an e-mail from the Supply Chain VP (Vice President) who was going to meet with a possible supplier from Japan and wanted some help from me in getting some information on the Japan market compiled so he could pretend that he knows more than he actually does. No problem for Mr. Salaryman, so a little later I sent out a small information package to this VP and meanwhile he had also mailed our marketing VP (sitting in the same office as him), cc:ing me, with a request for a short summary about our company and the Japan operations. "Absolutely!" was the reply he got from the Marketing VP within a few minutes (in that cheery one word positive mail reply style, with the exclamation mark, that kinda annoys me).

So, I put the whole thing aside in my head and get back to doing whatever it was I was doing, thinking that things were fine. A few hours of peaceful tranquility passes until I get a new e-mail from "to be terminated peon" (that whole mess is probably due for an update from me soon...) where he had received an e-mail from the Marketing VP asking for information about the company and the Japan operations. I looked over the info and ok'ed having it sent, but the whole deal just made me pretty confused and I'm not sure whether this is an example of stupidity, adherance to formal structures or just full blow confusion.

I am sure you too are confused so let me try and break it down for you here, in the order of events:

1. SC VP mails Mr. Salaryman

2. SC VP mails Marketing VP

3. Salaryman mail SC VP the requested information

4. Marketing VP relies back to SC VP saying "absolutely", meaning that she is working on it

5. SC VP replies to Mr. Salaryman "thanks, this is excellent"

6. Peace

7. (unknown to me) Marketing VP mails Peon requesting info

8. Peon forwards mail from Marketing VP to Mr. Salaryman

9. Mr. Salaryman replies to Peon "ok, plz send this out"

10. Peon sends the material to Marketing VP

11. (this is assumed) Marketing VP sends something to SC VP

12. End(?)

I probably should make a flowchart out of this. For some reason there seem to be 5 steps too many here... I just can't figure out if this is an example of stupidity or what?