Keeping with the topic of the last post regarding ringing phones, this one is also about noisy phones – but people who put their phones on speaker. In an office setting, this can be rather inconsiderate.

Someone in a cube very near to mine – okay, it was the guy next to me – was on a conference call, on his desk phone, on speaker. While ALSO being on his cell phone, ALSO ON SPEAKER. Really?!!?

Between the noise of the HVAC, people talking to other people in person, people talking on the phone, having conversations on a speaker just seems to make it that much worse. Plus, we don’t all need to hear what you’re talking about.

I get that there are times where, especially if a headset isn’t working or isn’t working right, a speaker is necessary if someone is trying to do a lot of typing while talking on the phone, but does that happen THAT often?

I fortunately have a headset at work that functions properly 99.9% of the time. On my phone, the way I have it set up, the hand set is NOT connected to the phone, so I have to either use the headset, speaker phone, or plug in the handset. The times the headset doesn’t work it is usually because it wasn’t put back in the charger properly and the battery died. But when I put it on speaker, I lower the volume until I can just not hear it, then turn it up one or two more so I can just hear it. That way, I am as little of a distraction to my cube neighbors as I can possibly be.

I won’t miss the coworkers talking on their speaker phones.