Assign Ringtones to whole contact group

What I like to do is have:

"Default" ringtone for unknown callers or people I haven't assigned to groups.

"Group" ringtones so that I know immediately whether the caller is a coworker, a friend, a family member, a medical office, etc.

And then I use a very few individual ringtones for my wife and a couple particular friends.

This strikes me as pretty obvious functionality; even the cheap Sprint phones I've used for the past 5 years can do this. I was greatly surprised to find that my iPhone can't.

What if you tried selecting one ring tone for everyone on your phone, then change the other ones to something different for each? I have a few different songs for certain people, then one song for everyone else.

As far as I know, you have to assign a certain ringtone one by one contact, not for a group specifically.
Not even Address Book gives you the chance to assign certain ringtones for the contacts in your List.
So, if no one knows a better technique, you'll have to do it one by one.

It is unbelievable, but true.
In that kind of classifications, I assigned a ringtone for my co-workers, family and friends, and I had to do it one by one. First selecting which ringtone would be for family, then co-workers, etc. etc. If yuo have 20 contacts could be annoying, but if you are over the 100, take a coffee, put music and sit to ringtone every contact you have.

This is where the doubt comes: ¿how could this marvelous software for the phone could be so marvelous for not to think in a shortcut to assign by groups certain ringtones...? Among other things.

In the other side, I am very pleased that I could make my own ringtones with my music and Garage Band, for me that was fun, maybe for others could be a waist of time.

That's just...ridiculous. Can't assign a custom tone to text messages. Can't assign a tone (custom or otherwise) to a contact group. My 4 year old RAZR can do that. What's the matter with Apple? Where are there so many stupid little worms like this eating their way through what is otherwise a fantastic product?

Anyone found a way to do this? Hoping I don't need to manually assign the same ringtone to everyone in my company...