Both voices are in-screen sounds. The comic aspect is due to the fact that both speakers are in the same frame (the same room) but they still use the telephone to communicate. The effect of the sound perspective locates the speakers in space: the volume of the man’s voice in the foreground is louder than that of the accountant in the background.
However, the absence of an on-the-air effect reinforces their physical proximity. This is taken to the extreme when the accountant walks into the foreground to pick up the document that his supervisor has requested : the phone call was all the more pointless as the document was just behind his office. Tati underlines not only the absurdity of the spatial divisions in this workplace, but also the division of labour that management has set up using technological tools.
