In an office where everyone has mobile phones ringing regularly, it is all too easy to descend into a barbarous cacophony where musical genres clash, and trills compete with chiming. It should be possible to arrange for each worker to have a different but complementary ringtone, based on their occupation, position and seniority.

Certain departments could have an artist allocated, e.g. marketing could have ABBA, with the manager getting their most memorable melody, perhaps "Dancing Queen", and underlings getting the more obscure tracks like "S.O.S." or "Fernando". Accounts could get Travis ("Sing" for the boss, "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" for the teaboy), and the receptionist could have something loud and brash like Geri Halliwell.
-- pottedstu, Sep 26 2001

Accounting gets "Money" for the boss, "I got five dollars and it's Saturday Night" for the junior clerk?
-- UnaBubba, Sep 26 2001


What happened to the good old days when the mobile phones simply made a fog-horn sound or a gong? Things were so simple then.
-- pathetic, Oct 03 2001


If you want harmony, force employees to have a ring tone that consists of one note on the pentatonic scale playing, however, different beats. That way, no matter how many phones are ringing at the same time, there will always be harmony.
-- sdm, Oct 03 2001


A thought: my phone lets you record a sound for your ring tone, although the quality is atrocious. It would be cool if everyone had a different animal noise as their ring tone, possibly themed to give a tropical rain forest or farmyard effect.
-- pottedstu, Oct 03 2001


Bags that unseen bird in African Queen... the one that goes "UrrAHrr-UrrAHrr". I've been keeping an ear out for it every time I watch an Attenborough documentary, but to no avail so far.
-- UnaBubba, Oct 03 2001


And somebody is forced to have the ringtone as used in Trigger Happy TV, so when it goes off the entire office can shout in unison: "HELLO? NO, I'M IN THE OFFICE! NO, RUBBISH, TOTAL RUBBISH!".
-- vincebowdren, Oct 03 2001


I kinda like the idea of taking a really obvious piece of classical music (like, shudder, Pachelbel's Canon) and having everyone's phone play a different instrument's part. Pachelbel would work exceptionally well, because if any two phones rang at the same time (to the best of my remembrance) the sound would not be discordant. Correct me, please.
-- innerlemming, Oct 04 2001



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