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The message that goes round the desk
A Japanese office runs on relayed speech to a degree that surprises people used to being copied in on everything. A change of time reaches you through whoever was nearest when it was announced, not through a message addressed to you, and the person relaying it is expected to pass on the words rather than their own summary — which is exactly what って does, since it quotes without rewording. The habit has a formal side too: 伝言 is a job, and a 伝言メモ pad sits by most desk phones with boxes for who called, when, and whether they will call back. It also has an obvious failure mode, which is this lesson's joke: by the time a thing has been relayed twice, the person it concerns is the last to hear it.