The PA system at the office occasionally chimes in with an obnoxious, “ATTENTION, ATTENTION: such-and-such document imaging system is currently offline, the problem is being investigated. REPEAT. such-and-such document imaging system is currently offline, the problem is being investigated. thank you.”

It’s really loud and really annoying and really intended to break your train of thought. So when the announcements come on, I echo with my own version: “ATTENTION, ATTENTION: flight 1674 has been delayed, please proceed to gate 14. REPEAT. our PA system sucks and is ENTIRELY TOO LOUD. The problem is… whatever.” And since I sit directly beneath a speaker, I have been known to throw things at the ceiling. It doesn’t help, but it does get laughs.

Whoever runs the PA obviously doesn’t want anyone to get any work done. The document imaging system alerts need to be played at migraine-inducing levels to be effective. Else, a document image might be accessed and we’d all be screwed.