![]() It can be something as innocent as Yankee Doodle or a song by a famous performer when you hear it over and over again, it becomes a distraction." "The trouble is when you start to get into melodies where the phone plays one bit over and over and over. "The kind that sound like an actual ring or a little bell or something are great," Whitmore said. Whitmore said she advises clients to stay away from musical ringtones in the office altogether, saying there are lots of standard ringtones "that are actually quite appropriate." Not-so-great ringtone situations arise most often at work, Whitmore said, when a small distraction can be a major issue. "It's easy to understand why a parent who's expecting a call from a baby sitter to program a specific ring so he or she can know who's calling without having to look down at the phone all the time," Whitmore said. Jacqueline Whitmore, a cell phone etiquette consultant for Sprint and author of "Business Class: Etiquette Essentials for Success at Work," said there are legitimate uses for personalized cell phone rings in public. "Hearing that 'dun-dun-dun-DUN' drives me crazy. ![]() ![]() "In the office, I don't need to be startled by Beethoven's Fifth," Pachter said. It's like choosing what to wear: When you put on a simple pair of bluejeans, you give away absolutely nothing."Ĭorporate etiquette trainer Barbara Pachter, author of "The Jerk With the Cell Phone: A Survival Guide for the Rest of Us," said that too often, people portray themselves as unprofessional and thoughtless by using loud, musical ringtones in public. To me, it seems that the best bet is something simple. "If you want to appear young and with it, you can choose something much more contemporary. "If you're a pretentious person, you may want to advertise how tasteful you are by making your ringtone the opening theme from Beethoven's Fifth, or Handel's 'Water Music,' " Thompson said. Because cell phones are totally portable, ringtones act as a public identity symbol - your own public theme song."Ī phone owner's choice of ringtone can speak volumes about his or her personality, Thompson said. ![]() A ringtone becomes a bumper sticker of sorts. "There are only a few things that allow us a huge menu of choices of ways to express ourselves - the way we dress, the way we wear our hair and the bumper stickers on our cars are a few. "I suppose this was absolutely inevitable," said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. Sneed's friend Alisha Lewis, 18, said she recently used her cell phone to record an African drum performance at a pageant for UF's African Students Union, and has used the recording as her ringtone. The Center for Biological Diversity offers a host of free ringtones featuring the calls of endangered animals, from the howl of a Mexican gray wolf to the squawk of a blue-throated macaw. The ringtone explosion isn't limited to popular music. The Recording Industry Association of America now awards ringtones its traditional gold and platinum designations for sales milestones, and Billboard Music charts the most downloaded ringtones with a top 40 list. The $2.50 Sneed spent to download the offending Outkast ringtone represents a small piece of a multibillion-dollar global market that is forming its own niche in the music industry and creating a host of new etiquette dilemmas. I got up and went to the bathroom, and was like, 'Well, I can't go back in there.' " "And it wasn't even during a time when the pastor was talking - it was during prayer. "It was this really loud, obnoxious Outkast song, with these horns and these drums," said Sneed, 19, a University of Florida freshman. Jessica Sneed was in church when her cell phone rang unexpectedly, blaring a two-second loop of a raucous hip-hop song for the whole congregation to hear.
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