Too Much Communication

Communication is important. Dekx and Jay and I have to call each other up every once in a while to hash out rules and customs of Chakakahnistan. Sometimes I call Jay while he and his fambly are just sitting down to eat dinner, or getting ready for bed. Sometimes I call Dekx when he's balls deep in some World of Warcraft crap. At work, we can call each other on the phone, email each other, or just make the quarter mile stroll to each other's cube (well, Jay's like 5 feet away from me). That's just what the company makes available to us. With our own personal cell phones we can text and call. With G-Mail and Yahoo we can send vulgar e-mail that doesn't get scanned and tracked by the company. But somewhere, someone sold our fair employer a bill of goods and convinced them that what everyone here needed to really work as efficiently as possible was a chat/IM program. So, Dekx can now call me to tell me to check my email telling me to check Office Communicator where he sent me a note telling me that he'll be down in a few minutes to see if I want to go to lunch. I will hand write him a letter, drop it off at IGT's in house mail drop, and have it delivered to his cube telling him that I can't go. Dekx will them send a carrier pigeon via bank-like Air tube to a central relay where the message will then be given to a pony express rider who will find himself suddenly beset by Cherokee Indians and he'll have to entrust the message to a brave collie who will, using his keen sense of smell, track me down in the men's room to bark out the message that I am a douche bag for not going to lunch with Dekx. I will then smoke signal a singing telegram via telegraph wire telling him, that he can "Suck it." All told, it will only take 3 or 4 hours for all this communication to occur.
Did they do a study or cost/benefit analysis to show that its use will out-weigh all the dim-wits that sit and chat all day? I know that Office Communicator is limited to our company, but many people's best friends and family also work here. I know plenty of my co-workers that sit and e-mail messages all day with people who sit 4 or 5 rows away. You can't show me much that would convince me these same people won't chat all day long.
Anyway, I have to get out the semaphore flags so I can ask Jay if he still wants to go to lunch. I know Jay is only 5 feet away and all that, but I just feel limited with what tools the company has given me.