How many CFOs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

How long does it take to move a fax machine from one location to another in the same building? Normally about 15 minutes — 30 tops. Of course that assumes you’re working under efficient management. The following story, which happened a few years ago, exemplifies how bureaucratic red tape can take a normally quick and easy task and drag it out much longer than is acceptable.

At the root of this issue was the CFO of our company, who liked to fix problems with a broad brush while micromanaging every detail. If a new policy was put in place, the changes were far-reaching, inefficient, and cumbersome. Witness: his purchasing rules.

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In the past, some employees had misused the company credit card. Rather than just reprimand the few employees who had abused the system, the CFO decided that nobody had access to the company credit card anymore. Also taboo was buying an item yourself and expensing it since this method had also been mishandled. Instead, acquisitions would be made via purchase orders or paid for by company checks.

Now to the fax machine. As we all know, moving a fax machine is straightforward: Power it off, unplug the power and phone lines from the unit, and transport it to the new location. Next, you move the phone line to the new spot so that the fax machine has the same number — the one printed on business cards. Finally, hook everything back up.

In this case, the tricky part was moving the phone line. IT at that point hadn’t moved analog phone lines — those jobs had been left to outside vendors. But the CFO had put a freeze on any unnecessary expense and was ruthless in determining what fit the category. My boss and I talked over the options and figured it’d be easiest and fastest if IT — or, rather, I moved the fax machine.

To do so, we needed a punchdown tool, but did not own one. My manager gave me the go-ahead to order one because it’d come in handy for other tasks, such as punching in more cables for the patch panels. We’d save money in the long run.

My mistake at this point was thinking it’d be easy to find the tool. At the time, our firm had a credit line with only one company, which I immediately found out didn’t sell it. I had to either set up a line of credit with a different company that sold the tool so that it could accept our purchase orders, or I’d need to find a vendor that would accept our company check. The first option would entail a lengthy approval process, so I decided it’d be faster to find a vendor that accepted company checks.

After some Web searching, I located such a vendor with the tool in stock, and at a decent price. I immediately filled out and passed the check request on to the accounting department, but as Murphy’s Law would have it, my request didn’t make it in time for that day’s batch of payments. Because our company prints checks every other week, it was another two weeks before the check was issued and sent to the vendor.

But more than three weeks after placing the order, we still hadn’t received the tool. When I asked the vendor about the status of our order, I was informed that the company hadn’t received our check. I was told to call back in a few more days, in case the check was still in transit.

A few days later, I called again, only to be told that our check had been returned to us. In the time since I’d verified the vendor had the item in stock and when the check actually arrived, the company had sold out of the punchdown tools and were no longer selling them. The CFO’s inefficiences had come back to bite me, and I was back at Square One.

I found another vendor that would accept a company check, but unfortunately, the day for printing checks had just passed. Given that this issue had been taking a lot longer than it should have, our accounting manager made an exception and produced a handwritten check for me to place the order.

About one and a half weeks later, I finally received the tool. That same day I moved the fax machine and phone line and did a quick test. Voila, the fax machine was up and running. It took me 15 minutes. For those keeping track at home, more than a month had passed since this seemingly simple task had begun.

The silver lining was that we didn’t have to deal with the bureaucracy and annoyances that resulted from the CFO’s policies much longer. He left soon after — on his own accord, we were told. The CEO immediately relaxed some of the policies, and we could breathe again. It’s a feeling not to be taken for granted. Not surprisingly, employees also got a lot more done.

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This story, “How many CFOs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.