Rocketdogbulldozer

Image courtesty of Macleans.ca. Source: http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/01/21/help-my-office-is-ring-tone-hell/

This post is more of a vent than anything else but I have to let it out before I start smashing other peoples handsets so it is better here than at work.

I work in an environment where people’s mobile phones ring all day long. I work in telecommunications so I understand that we need to get those phone calls and part of that is being able to hear your phone ring, but I have a couple of points to bring to the boil that are driving me utterly bonkers.

The devices are called Mobiles, in the states you call them Cells, for a reason and my point is exactly that. It’s very small and portable, a mobile, take the dam thing with you. Don’t leave it on your desk with it set on the loudest possible volume ringing and ringing and ringing.

Secondly, your choice of ring tone is exactly that; your choice. But please, for the love of buddha, do not subject me to it when it rings on average of 20 times per day at the pre-stated top volume setting sitting on your desk while you go get coffee and nag to your neighbour in the kitchen.

I don’t need to hear it, I’m glad you like that single Fergie sang three years ago about big girls, utterly thrilled that it reminds you to be a strong woman, but I seriously can’t take it in it’s 40 second shortened version 20 times a day, five days a week.

And the more current Top 40 it is only makes me hate commercial radio more and more. And it will only make me use a more obnoxious banging trance excerpt for my ringtone in retaliation which I am also prone to set off right next to you purposely just to see what revenge feels like.

There is in our office life, little left of our privacy as we head down the path of open office environments, and your ringtone is not a retaliation against ‘the man’ who is making you give up your office, it is more a statement of your arrogance and ignorance of taste in music. Ear worms of your ringtones will drive me to act out random acts of violence sooner or later and the result could be catastrophic.

It probably doesn’t help that I was once a musician who worked in Musical Instrument Retail and was actually subjected to 19 billion versions at varying degrees of skill and lack thereof, Stairway to Heaven. It is just like the sign says in Wayne’s World. We should have signs like that in Offices. No Ringtones.

And finally, what is with Caller Tones? Do you seriously want to subject me to hear 15 – 30 seconds of you choice of music on the other end of the phone mashed with a muted normal ring every time I need to call you? It is torturous, I would rather drive to Sydney from Melbourne to ask you a question than ring your phone one more time knowing that I am going to have to hear that short blast of mind invading music. Just turn it off.

Let the phone ring; let it be a ring. Before someone goes postal.

Brring ring? You know the one?