Started my current job in October. The orange light on my desk phone was flashing from day one. Soon worked out it meant I had new messages. Tried to access the messages but couldn't due to not having a PIN. A quick call to IT sorted that out.
Turned out that there were
loads of messages, some of them over a year old.
This means my predecessor, who had been in the job less than a year before going on maternity leave, had never checked her messages. And the name on the caller display is still that of her predecessor - unfortunately, I can't change that myself, needs admin privileges.
Lately, the phone on the (currently) spare desk next to me has started flashing as well, and it's very irritating, so I need to get the PIN for that. Looking around at my colleagues' desks, four on our bank of six have flashing orange lights. One of my colleagues has even resorted to taping over the light so make the problem go away.
People are weird.