Okay, I guess it’s time to admit something to you, great readers: I don’t really work in a high-rise condo-style office building with a swimming pool in my office and a glorious view of downtown Dallas. Gah. Man, now that I type it out like that it sure does look good. Actually, never mind. I really do work in that. I have a four thousand-square-foot office overlooking glorious downtown Manhattan. Or did I say Dallas? Whatever. The point is my office is probably better than yours. I have more leather in here than a cow farmer in Fort Worth. I would put up a form that allowed you to submit to me your office square footage and value and it would return to you a value of whether or not mine was better than yours. But it’s not worth the time coding it because all it would ever say was, “Nope, sorry, Space’s is better.”

So anyway, to my point. Let’s say I didn’t work in a high-rise luxury office. I would, in that case, probably work somewhere lowly like the rest of you, like a cube farm. Okay, screw it. I can’t really tell my story if I keep up this lie. I will go ahead and shoot straight with you. For the last two weeks, while my office was being renovated with solid platinum and diamond stuff, I have been working in a temporary location at a normal office, in a cube farm. It’s a step down, but it’s also a way for me to keep in touch with the people. The normal people. And I’ve come to learn one thing for sure about cube farms: I hate ringtones.

Let me explain. There are those who have the loud ass annoying ringtones that are just turned up too loud, so it just bothers the shit out of you every time it rings. I hate being woken up at my desk by someone’s phone going off in the next aisle. Nothing pisses me off worse. Well, actually a couple of things do. And one of those is when someone walks away from his damn desk, and leaves his phone sitting on the desk. And it rings. And rings. And rings.

And rings.

And then it finally goes to voice mail. Well, I’m surprised you didn’t hear it anyway, dipshit! You had it on as loud as it could go! Ass! Then there are those ones that aren’t so bad, but just piss me off by general principle of being displayed too much. Danny in the next cube – God bless him, I love the guy – has a ringtone set for when his wife calls him. It’s personalized so that when she calls him twelve times a day, it plays the theme from The Little Mermaid. Under the Sea. Nothing gets stuck in my head worse than that. And since she calls him every twenty-two minutes, I get to hear it again and again. And again.

Then you got Tony over here on the other side of the cube wall to my left. His was probably funny the first time he heard it, and decided it would probably make people laugh. But I don’t think he considered two things: number one, that it wasn’t really appropriate for work. And number two, that he would never get to hear it, since he walks away and leaves his phone on his desk ALL THE TIME. So it sounds like an old rotary phone, then you hear Chris Rock say, “Will somebody answer the bleep bleep phone?!” And then ring, ring, “Will somebody answer the bleep bleep phone?!” And then ring, ring, “Wi– you get the point. It goes and goes and goes (as loud as it can be turned up) until it reaches voice mail. We are across the aisle from a call center. That means the customers on the other ends of lines over there can hear this way inappropriate ring. It’s maddening.

No, not me. I do have personalized rings for certain people. But I follow certain rules I’ve self-applied so that I don’t upset anyone. When I come into work, I turn my phone to vibrate. First thing in the morning. Number two, when I walk away, I carry it with me. Simple concept, folks! Why buy a mobile device if you’re not going to take it mobile? Sigh. Maybe I should bring another mobile device I have to work. It’s made by Browning, and it could help me get rid of some of these annoyances. Please. For the love of The Elephant, people. Turn off your annoying ringers.