People outside the finance industry really buy it too. I think it's because in most companies, VPs are above director. Only in finance, is it below.
Every now and again someone whose spent a career exclusively in finance gets bitten by this when transitioning into the business world. A friend once told me a story about a deal with Amazon nearly getting tanked when I coworker chewed out an Amazon VP, saying they wanted to "talk to someone who could make decisions". Took a lot of massaging to salvage that deal.