Saxophone #2

Now that I sit in the middle of the hallway, there is always tons of commotion. I do well in commotion – I can concentrate and multi-task with the best of them (I am the oldest of 5 kids...). I am super good at voice recognition – a rare and almost useless talent – but I can’t for the life of me tell when MY phone is ringing, versus when one of the hundred people sitting within a hundred feet of me’s phone is ringing. This could have something to do with the fact that everyone has the exact same electronic ring tone. My good voice recognition fails me there.

There are so many times I’ll be down the hallway, and hear what sounds like, to me, to be my phone ringing – only to run down the hallway to get to my phone, to see the guy behind me coyly pick up his phone. Or I’ll cut a conversation short to dodge back to my desk, only to see Julie grab her phone. Sigh. I can never win.

If I miss my phone, I get a voicemail. I have this unusual and illogical loathing of voicemails. It means I have to handle an issue later versus taking care of it now. It means I’ll have to call the guy back. It means I’ll have to turn off my music, put my earphones in, turn up the volume on my computer, wait until WindowsMedia finally decides to load, listen to the voicemail, close a million boxes down (YES I really want to close Windows Media down. YES I really want to close the voicemail prompter. NO I don’t want to change the format. YES I want to close the email that alerts me I have a voicemail), turn back down the volume on my computer, and press play on my music. And finally, delete the voicemail – because they take up a lot of space, and you only get so much space in your inbox. Believe me, I know. I’ve had to get a bigger inbox. Twice.

Can you see the nuisance and workload-increaser voice mails are?

So – today after a couple dozen ridiculous phone encounters - I decided I couldn’t get any work done until I had a new ring tone. This was now a productivity issue.

(Have you ever seen the episode of The Office where Jim won’t work until Karen gets the bag of chips she requires? This was like that.)

I finally figured out, using numbers, how to get to my ringtones. I then began to listen to each of them. Julie came to listen and give her inputs as to which one she would allow me to have I should get.

I personally wanted the ring tone Are You There? Which offers a lovely male tenor saying, (wait for it…) Are you there? Are you there? Are you there? Julie said if I chose that one, she would throw something at me every time my phone rang. That encouraged me much more than dissuaded me, I’m afraid.

However, in the end – I went with Saxophone #2. It is a nice little ditty – and has an unexpected end. Which is why I like it. It goes all low and mysterious at the end.

Also – if the song, “There’s a place in France where the naked ladies silly people dance, there’s a hole in the wall where the men monkeys can see it all” had a theme song – Saxophone #2 would be it (The silly people/monkeys is the version I taught my siblings. I wonder if they even know the real version…?).

People walked by during this whole selection process and added input and validation to the whole- I need a new ringtone issue– so now they’re calling my phone to see what I picked. Turns out no one likes Saxophone #2 but me. Oh well. Myabe if I told them my association to the Place in France song, they'd understand. But I'm not sure how appropriate singing that song to my male co-workers would be. I'm thinking it'd probably be pretty frowned upon.

UPDATE: So my phone just rang for the first time unexpectedly (every other time I knew someone was calling to hear it...) and #1 - it startled me. #2 - everyone in the hallway stopped and looked at me and #3 I laughed so hard I could barely answer the phone. I was still laughing when I finally picked it up, and the person on the other end said, "I'm looking for Brittney?" and I said this is she - and he said, "I... didn't recognize your voice..." Probably because I was laughing so hard.

Julie looked at me and once she could talk (she was laughing too) and said, "thats not gunna work. Why does it go down at the end like that? (my favorite part) It sounds like an elephant sitting down."

Looks like I'll need a new ring tone.

On the bright side - I wore all yellow today, in honor of summer. I look the sun. In a good way.

Also, Julie started the day off by falling out of her chair. That was awesome.

We've laughed so hard we've cried twice today. I think we've both had too little sleep, worked too much and need a weekend. It must be Friday.

Love,
Brittney