This light on the door or exterior wall of an office lights up whenever the person in the office is on the phone.

This product will prevent the following two problems:

1. A person peeks into your open office door, sees that you're there, and starts to talk to you, not realizing that you are on the phone (or, more invisibly, on hold while using a speaker phone, or using a headset).

2. Someone wants to wait until you are off the phone and, lacking any other way to be notified of this, must maintain visual contact with you the whole time in order to witness your hanging up.

The "On the Phone" exterior light would solve both problems, from both the officer's and the visitor's points of view, quickly and elegantly. You could leave the office door open now without being interrupted, and a visitor could wait to talk to you while strolling about the hallway or tending to other matters within visibility of the office wall.

Thank you.
-- phundug, Jan 05 2007

What is the symbol for "Please stop swearing dear, I am on the phone with a client."
-- Galbinus_Caeli, Jan 05 2007


This would be great if there was a color coded indicator. Red meaning "DO NOT DISTURB". Yellow for "I am on the phone but use caution when interrupting." And finally green indicating, "OK to talk to me." Where I very well might be on the phone and if you need my full undivided attention, then its best to wait for the light to go out. Other than that, my conversation isn't too important to have a brief interruption for something like my signature or a quick question or something that does not take me away from the phone too long.
-- Jscotty, Jan 05 2007


Part-baked - my old boss had exactly what you've described. When he didn't want to be disturbed, the light outside his office was activated. He was later investigated for surfing gay porn, which raised the obvious question : What exactly was he doing when the light was lit?
-- jtp, Jan 06 2007



random, halfbakery