2004-11-29 - 12:54 p.m.

A disturbing number of people in this office walk around clicking their fingers, like they�re off to audition for Guys and Dolls after work and are mentally running through their big number. I don�t know what it is. It�s like working in the administrative chapter of The Kids From Fame (�Hey! Let�s do the stationery order RIGHT HERE!�).

The loudest and most enthusiastic finger-clicker was a middle-aged Polish lady who used to look as if she�d applied her makeup whilst perfecting her Jackson Pollock imitation. She was very quiet, and didn�t speak much English, though we did discover one day that she was the head of an official Cliff Richard fan club, so in her head she was obviously just constantly grooving to Wired for Sound or Devil Woman.

Her legacy lives on in a thousand arrhythmic nervous ticks.

There�s another, even more annoying epidemic, though.

It is said that, given the correct atmospheric conditions, an adult elephant can hear the distressed cry of its mewling offspring across up to six miles of open savannah. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the owners of abandoned mobile phones, left at their desks and bleating into an uncaring office like a wounded pup.

Like new-born babies, mobile telephone ringtones seem to have been set at pitches and wavelengths which have been specifically designed for optimum annoyance. Unlike new-born infants, however, you can fit your mobile phone into your pocket when you head off for a meeting or a piss. Their mobility is their big selling point! That�s why people buy them! Hell, you can even turn them off and the world would still not collapse in on itself, crushed by the density of its own unanswered phone calls.

Instead, we get a near-constant chorus of polyphonic distress, petulant handsets noisily demanding attention from owners who are pretending to have better things to do.

It used to be a case of �Look at me. I�m so important that I have to have a mobile phone.�

Now it�s �Look at me. I�m too important to answer my mobile phone or even carry it around with me, only you can�t look at me because I�m in a different part of the building braying about my managerial position like some deranged corporate mule whilst an ill-advised choice of ring tone makes everyone around my unmanned desk want to jab pencils into my soulless eyes whilst ramming my phone into an inaccessible orifice with such force that it would make my innards impossible to retrieve, let alone my voicemail messages.�

Yes, I find it quite annoying.