Warning..?

Yesterday I noticed one of our office phones was trying to draw my attention by repeatingly displaying the same message.

[ warning, warning, warning, warning, warning... ]

It seemed a very important message, but what is it warning me for? I tried to answer the phone in the hope it would tell me what's wrong, but besides the 'warning' message it didn't have anything to say...

Warning, this phone will self destruct in 10 seconds..?

In the end I just removed the batteries. This didn't solve the emergency (whatever it was), but at least it stopped the blinking message...