Please Concur: It's not OK to walk around wearing a cellphone headset

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I've been noticing people on the BART train in the morning that wear these little cellphone headsets even when they're not talking to anyone.

They put them on in the morning like a necktie and wear them all day long? There always very serious, nerdy looking people.

This is NOT okay. You look like an air traffic controller.

― andy, Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:27 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah i agree, if you wear one you look like a douchebag.

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:29 (twenty-one years ago)

On the plus side, when you're talking to somebody on your phone, you look like an insane person.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:33 (twenty-one years ago)

that's a plus?

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:35 (twenty-one years ago)

People are less likely to fuck with you if they think you're nutzoid.

― craggy jones, Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:36 (twenty-one years ago)

The best part about Seattle is when you get on a bus, and you hear a cell phone conversation with someone who you peripherally saw wearing one of those headsets, and then when you get off the bus, you turn your head, and the guy is not actually using any cell phone at all!

― donut christ (donut), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:37 (twenty-one years ago)

which kinda proves craggy's point, but takes it to the next level yo.

― donut christ (donut), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

HSTENCIL!! I WAS TRY TO MAKE TEH FUNNY! WHY YUO BRAEK FUNNY?

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

do you not understand the concept of the "straight man?"

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

in comedy, i mean.

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:40 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.outrate.net/cruisingjpg.jpg

― LSTD (answer) (sexyDancer), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:40 (twenty-one years ago)

On the plus side, when you're talking to somebody on your phone, you look like an insane person.

Exactly! I have an unopened blue tooth headset that I'll probably never use (came free with the phone).

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Now you fuxor up my joke/response. In revenge, I will forever imagine you looking like Abbot.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:41 (twenty-one years ago)

I almost mentioned this on the "working at the front desk" thread, but thought that it strayed too far from the original intent.

My dad and I were eating at The Kettle (think Denny's, but not as nice) when a man sat in the booth across from us, looked at us, and said HELLO. We looked at him, but before we could answer, he was already into his conversation with whoever it was that was stuck inside his ear. The guy sat there with his hands folded in front of him, looking straight at us, blabbing away. IT MAKES THINGS VERY AWKWARD.

There was a guy doing the same thing in line at Wal*Mart (don't ask) last night, but it's hard to look any more nutzoid than anyone else in that Godforsaken place.

― Pleasant//Plains, Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:42 (twenty-one years ago)

The Kettle (think Denny's, but not as nice)

Ummm.... Ah, never mind.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:43 (twenty-one years ago)

The Kettle is terrible. Why would you eat there? We pass it on the way to the airport and my husband always jokingly asks if I want to stop for an omelet. Sometimes the gagging noises are real.

xpost

Those headsets that plug into cell phones crack me up. A woman I work with takes her phone to the table when we go to lunch. When it rings, instead of answering the phone like a normal person, she sticks the little piece in her ear. What's the advantage? Am I missing something? And quit answering your phone at lunch, rude.

― Rebekkah (burntbrat), Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Hands-free apparati are for when you're using your hands for something else. If you're not using your hands, don't use the stupid thing like an extra in Logan's Run or some shit.

Did normal landline telephones ever inspire such rampant gaylordness as these cellphones have?

― andy, Thursday, 30 December 2004 22:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, now. The Kettle had great poached eggs and chicken-fried steak the size of a baseball glove.

But Michael was right up there. I should've said "think IHOP, but not as nice."

Did normal landline telephones ever inspire such rampant gaylordness as these cellphones have?

Like this?

http://www.victoriantrading.com/store/catalogimages/1a/1a44.jpg

― Pleasant//Plains, Thursday, 30 December 2004 23:08 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.101phones.com/shop_image/product/d351a74b6915b708d71fa7ad6864d446.jpg

Ah, the wacky, "fun" Eighties.

― andy, Thursday, 30 December 2004 23:11 (twenty-one years ago)

ihttp://www.wrybread.com/gammablablog/images/4-03/sunny-walk2/plugged-in.jpg

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Thursday, 30 December 2004 23:15 (twenty-one years ago)

We have loan officer/broker-types who wander in & out of our officers wearing the wireless bluetooth ones.

http://www.infosync.no/news/2003/03/26/gfx/nokia_hdw_2_01.jpg

just think! maybe somebody will eventually pull off the Shirow/Appleseed headset/antenna thing!

― kingfish (Kingfish), Thursday, 30 December 2004 23:48 (twenty-one years ago)

A man shouted "I TOLD YOU TO FUCKING LEAVE IT ALONE!" in my face on Argyll Street. It wasn't until he was past me that I realised he was on the phone. Scared the shit out of me.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Friday, 31 December 2004 00:46 (twenty-one years ago)

i dunno, i love nerds, so i sort of love this. when the soccer moms and college kids catch up to it, ill vomit for everyone. in a bag

― kephm, Friday, 31 December 2004 00:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm related to someone who does this. A couple of times I said 'your headset's still in your ear,' and he said 'yeah I know' and left it there. AAGH.

― Adamdrome Crankypants (Autumn Almanac), Friday, 31 December 2004 00:51 (twenty-one years ago)

def breast fed til he was in the fifth grade

― kephm, Friday, 31 December 2004 00:57 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

THIS IS NOT ONLY INDEFENSIBLE, IT'S GETTING ON MY FUCKING NERVES.

WORST OF ALL, MORE PEOPLE ARE DOING IT.

― don weiner (don weiner), Saturday, 22 April 2006 00:12 (nineteen years ago)

it's totally not ok when other people are doing it. but i hear the bluetooth = less cancer than the non-bluetooth, so if i upgrade i may well become one of these people.

then again, i may just go on using my timeport with shitty replacement radio shack antenna.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 22 April 2006 00:16 (nineteen years ago)

http://news.digitaltrends.com/article9954.html

One way to avoid any risk of developing brain cancer from use of mobile phones might be to use a handsfree headset to get the phone's radio emitter away from the skull…of course, one might want to consider what parts of the body might be proximate to the phone's emitter when using such a headset.

― milton parker (Jon L), Saturday, 22 April 2006 00:22 (nineteen years ago)

(for anyone not reading the link -- there have been other studies in the past that find no traceable connection between cell phone use and brain cancer -- we won't know for a while -- but reading this made me a lot less critical of people opting for headsets, despite the fact that they look like lunatics using them)

― milton parker (Jon L), Saturday, 22 April 2006 00:28 (nineteen years ago)

Nothing screams self-important douchebag like a bluetooth set. I don't care if there may be rational reasons for their use, I will remain steadfast in my hate.

― milo z (mlp), Saturday, 22 April 2006 00:34 (nineteen years ago)

I think it is ok to wear a headset and that it is one of those things which ppl will just get used to in time. We have a natural inclination to regard as odd any adjunct to our bodies which isn't actually biologically part of us, but utility and ubiquity soon make us regard it as normal. No doubt when our primeval ancestors first started wearing clothes they were slagged off by their peers as ridiculous, but when more ppl started wearing them the advantages of keeping warm and hiding such embarrassing/potentially unpleasant things as erections and menses were recognised, then clothes were accepted. No doubt the wearers of the first spectacles in medieval times faced a slagging from their mates too, but as they became cheaper to make and buy and the advantages of being able to avoid walking into ppl ect ect were recognised then ppl accepted them.

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 22 April 2006 11:10 (nineteen years ago)

what about watches?

― AaronK (AaronK), Saturday, 22 April 2006 11:34 (nineteen years ago)

watches is an interesting one. I never wear one as I just look at the time on my phone! I can foresee a time when will have contact lenses that have computer displays on them which we can wear as walk around and see the world behind the display in a function analogous to the 'Mix' button where you can see teletext and a TV programme simultaneously.

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 22 April 2006 11:40 (nineteen years ago)

I think any situation where the person carries on obliviously with any one-sided conversation in a public place using any kind of mobile device is to the detriment of a smoothly functioning society. Also, people who pile their phones onto a table at dinner are the rudest fuckers in the world.

Wearing a Bluetooth headset just says you're someone's office bitch and is NOT, I repeat NOT a status symbol.

― suzy (suzy), Saturday, 22 April 2006 12:00 (nineteen years ago)

watches is an interesting one. I never wear one as I just look at the time on my phone

Been doing this for years! In fact, I couldn't tell you where my old watch is - hopefully, it's kicking around my apartment somewhere.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Saturday, 22 April 2006 18:46 (nineteen years ago)

only people i don't inwardly scoff at w/these: taxi and livery cab drivers

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 22 April 2006 19:05 (nineteen years ago)

only people i don't inwardly scoff at w/these: taxi and livery cab drivers

I'm really starting to hate cabbies who barely acknowledge your existence as they yammer into their cells.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Saturday, 22 April 2006 19:31 (nineteen years ago)

Umm Mark I'm not sure our first clothes-wearing caveperson ancestors would necessarily have considered erections embarrassing. I'm guessing they were pretty into them, actually.

Though I'm sure they came to appreciate the protection clothes would give them against thick shrubs, blowing sand, knotty tree bark, rocks, and all the other things they were probably accidentally scraping their junk on before they figured out loincloths.

― nabisco (nabisco), Saturday, 22 April 2006 19:37 (nineteen years ago)

well Nabisco, obviously some ppl were into them! But it would have been embarrassng to others.

― MarkH (MarkH), Sunday, 23 April 2006 00:48 (nineteen years ago)

the bluetooth headsets all make their wearers look like lobot.

― maura (maura), Sunday, 23 April 2006 01:46 (nineteen years ago)

the only reason i use a bluetooth headset is because i drive a car with manual transmission and it is impossible to answer/hold the phone while shifting and steering. granted, i shouldn't talk on the phone while driving anyway...

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 23 April 2006 02:18 (nineteen years ago)

it's not impossible but it is illegal. here, at least

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 23 April 2006 02:24 (nineteen years ago)

and, yes, people wearing these things, in the street or in the office or anywhere where they don't actually need their hands free, look ridiculous

people wearing them, in situations where they do actually need their hands free, just look pretty funny/silly

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 23 April 2006 02:27 (nineteen years ago)

I think Bluetooth headsets make everyone look like an extra in some Z-grade Matrix ripoff.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Sunday, 23 April 2006 02:30 (nineteen years ago)

much worse: speaker phone w/the cell

― artsake, Sunday, 23 April 2006 02:51 (nineteen years ago)

A guy I have the misfortune to do contract work for (which I do at his residence)-- wears one of things around the house, and frequently while he's talking to me he'll just jump into a different conversation entirely...It's then I realize that he's had somebody on the phone with him the entire time I've been talking to him. Almost as frequently, he's juggling 2 phone conversations this way. It's unbearably obnoxious.

― Sparkle Motion's Rising Force, Sunday, 23 April 2006 03:04 (nineteen years ago)

"Contract work" = "murder for hire"

xp: ah, the walkie-talkie function of Nextel phones. I'm glad that died out a bit.

― milo z (mlp), Sunday, 23 April 2006 03:06 (nineteen years ago)

airport headset people - i request a license to kill them!!!!!!!!

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 23 April 2006 03:06 (nineteen years ago)

Salespeople at work on the landline to one client, their mobile rings, they PUT THAT PERSON ON HOLD and answer their mobile, thats just rude.

― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 23 April 2006 03:10 (nineteen years ago)

milo your version of contract work makes my anecdote far more interesting, tho' in reality it merely=picture framing.

Salespeople at work on the landline to one client, their mobile rings, they PUT THAT PERSON ON HOLD and answer their mobile, thats just rude.
This guy does exactly that. To his mom. It's staggeringly rude.

― sparkle Motion's Rising Force, Sunday, 23 April 2006 03:14 (nineteen years ago)

The walkie talkie thing shows no sign of dying out where I am

This week I saw someone talking on her phone, say "oh hold on I have another call", take out a 2nd phone from her purse, and start talking on that, while still talking on the first phone. Ugh.

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Sunday, 23 April 2006 03:18 (nineteen years ago)

i hate the phone.

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 23 April 2006 03:23 (nineteen years ago)

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