Mid Ring

Have you ever noticed that no one ever picks up a phone mid-ring? If the office phone is ringing, it always gets picked up between tones, never in the middle. Often, my hand will hover over the handset until a ring is completed before I grab it and pick it up. It's a very weird phenomenon.

Mobile phones have solved this problem somewhat by letting us have musical ringtones. It’s ok to interrupt a song mid-beat because it’s just like pausing your CD player.

I’m going to make a conscious effort to break this behaviour. So far I’m failing, because while typing this, I have answered the phone twice and each time I did it between rings. This could take a while.

Try it. I bet you have as much trouble breaking the behaviour as I do.