Hey Dickface . . . nice Bluetooth earpiece

The BBQ Pit
21

So, the phone rings and you answer and put the headpiece in. Nobody says you can’t be available by cell phone at all time, but to wear the flashing fucking blue light 24 hours a day (all real things I’ve seen):

  • Out to dinner with your wife
  • While bench pressing at the gym
  • While grocery shopping
  • While using a urinal in a public bathroom
  • While working your job at the gas station counter

Is a sign that you are a self-important asshole.

If you really walk around all day wherever you go (like alot of people) waiting for that call, then you are just showing off.

22

What’s more disturbing to me (and this has happened to me at least twice on mass transit) is that now I assume a person sitting alone, babbling to him/herself, is having a cell conversation----until I notice that neither ear features an earpiece, and the “conversation” consists of jumbled words that, while recognizably English, make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

So yeah, in the one case it’s fucking annoying, and in the other, startling and a bit scary. Neither one especially desirable.

23

Prepare to be assimilated!

I’ve always thought they made people look somewhat Borg-like. In fact one of the first people I ever saw wearing one as though it was a piece of jewelry was a nasty robotic slave driver team leader where I used to work. One day I took special notice of it and remarked to her “You know, Borg actually works on you!”

I don’t think she understood the reference.

24

Oh, and for full disclosure: my wife recently bought one of these goddamned things, and has been wearing it around the house, while we eat, or watch movies, et cetera. Claims it doesn’t bother her to have the cyborg apparatus hanging from her lobe. I haven’t looked for a divorce lawyer yet, but I do foresee some heated negotiations in our immediate future.

25

That’s why I like those earpiece thingies, although I have no plans to get one myself, and I certainly don’t think that if I did have one I’d want to keep it on all the time. But they give us talkers-to-ourselves-on-mass-transit a convenient momentary camouflage of normality. So I’m rooting for everybody else to get one. :slight_smile:

26

That is exactly what I am talking about. If you are actually talking on the phone, fine, use the earpiece.

But to sit around with it attached to your head tells me 2 things: 1) I am showing off my supposed coolness, and 2) any concievable possible random phone call is more important than you, even though are sitting right in front of me.

27

How about 3) They forgot that they had it on. I’ve done that a few times.

28

Bluetooth pieces don’t irritate me that much - if you want to wear it, I’m not exactly in a position to get angry about it. What irritated me is when I can hear someone’s conversation loud and clear…and we’re not even in the same room. I was having my sleep in this morning and when I woke up, I realised I could here someone talking outside.

A woman was on her mobile phone and I could hear every single word she was saying and she was in the next building. She was sitting on her balcony, having a cuppa while on the phone to a family member, judging by the conversation (I really could hear everything) and I could still hear her when I closed the window. She wasn’t yelling, but her voice was just really loud.

Some people don’t have personal volume controls and when that’s combined with cell-phones, Bluetooth or not, it’s pretty damn irritating for everyone around them. So I’d be more inclined to pit an asshole who is screaming at his subordinates out in public over the phone, rather than someone with a borg-like attachment that is only there for show. That said, I’d be pretty damned annoyed if someone always wore it, like Vinyl Turnip’s wife.

29

Not only that, they’re small buggers with no cord - easy to lose or drop between the cushions, or get smashed by your keys. They are quite unobtrusive so why not leave it on?

I agree it is exceedingly unprofessional to wear in a meeting or when you’re talking to someone for an extended period of time. But if they’re not interacting with you directly, why the fuck would you care? Loudness is because of the weird feeling of talking into… nothing. We’re so used to having a microphone to speak into, when we don’t see it we assume we need to talk louder. In a few years we’ll have adapted to the sensation.

People with bad breath, those who slurp their coffee, and those whose iPods can be heard by those nearby are just as annoying, but I can’t be arsed to pit them.

The blue light annoys even me, the user. They could come up with a more subtle indicator, I agree.

30

Or The President’s Analyst.

31

I thought about getting a bluetooth headset and walking around with it all day.

Then i decided it would probably be cheaper and easier to get “Total Wanker” tattooed on my forehead. It’s permanent, won’t fall off or wash off, and does just as good a job as the headset of conveying my persona to the world.

Note: like others in this thread, i’m not objecting to the technology per se; only to those who wear it like it’s a piece of jewelry, whether or not they’re actually using it.

32

It’s about like people in 1982 wearing one of those toaster-sized pagers on their belt and glancing at it every two minutes so that people would go, “Whoa, he must be a doctor!” :rolleyes:

33

The only person I know who has one is my boss… I’ve got to let that slide for him, 'cause he’s in and out of the office quite often, and has to talk to way more people than I’d ever want to in a day.

It’s fairly easy to tell if he’s talking to you (it’s different speaking to a programmer as opposed to a rig manager), but it is annoying going in to his office to speak to him. You sorta sidle in making those “are you on the phone, 'cause if you aren’t I’d like a moment” hand gestures, all the while staring at the flashing blue light, which seems to flash at random intervals whether the user is on the phone or not.

I’d forgotten until I read the other thread though; we could do without incidents such as:

34

I must be getting old. It’s taking me way too long to catch on. I still find myself looking at the guy having an animated conversation with apparently nobody and thinking “Aw, man, that’s really sad. Whose brilliant idea was mainstreaming, anyway?”

Only then do I remember it’s just a cell phone. Gets me every time.

(This of course only happens when I can’t see the headset.)

35

I don’t have a dog in this fight, I don’t own a Bluetooth. I do have a semi-funny story about answering a guy who was only talking on his bluetooth (or Razr, isn’t that another brand that has the earpiece thingie?).

My coworker and I got into the elevator one morning heading out to do some fieldwork. The guy who was already in the elevator said loudly and cheerfully “hey! How’re YOU doing?”.

My coworker and I both turned to him and said “Hi!, great! how’re you?”. The guy gives us the FUNNIEST look and then says “yeah, I’m in the elevator, I’m on my way to meet you, blah blah blah…”.

We both just cracked up. But the earpiece guy wasn’t amused. Okay so he WAS a little pretentious, or more likely clueless.

But otherwise, for most earpiece users?

IMHO, likely leaving it on, especially if one is moving about a lot, is more convenient and comfortable than …

…getting a phone call, digging it out of the pocket and putting it on, hanging up, putting it back in the pocket to avoid appearing as if you are “important”, getting another phone call, digging it back out of your pocket, putting it on, hanging up, putting it back in the pocket to avoid appearing important…and so on.

I think there are some people in this thread getting way too overwrought and making some pretty big assumptions (that they are worn in order to look important). I’ll bet a steak dinner that most people simply leave them there in the same way one leaves a set of sunglasses on top of one’s head. Because it’s convenient, comfortable and most folks forget they are there after a very short time.

As long as they’re reasonably quiet and don’t do the shouting into the phone thing (that IS rude, clueless, OH so "look at me I’m important, and deserves all the ridicule a person can through at it), otherwise, so what?

36

What I truly don’t understand is why this would bother anyone. Who the heck cares if these people are being pretentious? Your being annoyed to the point of seeming to take personal offense strikes me as sticking one’s nose where it definitely doesn’t belong. Perhaps the bluetoother is an insecure, attention-seeking, over-compensatory muttonhead. So what? Let him/her live a delusion if it makes them feel better about themselves.

37

What depresses me is how many people in this thread have mentioned using it while driving, as if by having both hands free to talk automatically stops you from being a menace on the road for the rest of us.

38

Sometimes I’m behind people at the checkout who are blathering away on their phone (sometimes having what really should be private discussions) and ignoring the human being standing behind the counter. Why does somebody on the other end of an electronic connection become more important than the person standing two feet away from you?

But what really bothers me in this thread is the number of people who apparently have a habit of talking on the phone while driving. Don’t do this, because I don’t want you running into me because you ran a red light while yakking on the phone. You might as well have a couple of drinks while you’re at it.

39

Slight hijack…

How is talking handsfree on the phone any different than being in a conversation with your passenger(s), or listening to an amusing or interesting radio program?

Millions of drivers manage to do those things without being a menace and they pose the same risks of distraction to the driver (however large or small those risks might actually be).

With that type of logic, it seems that some people think drivers should sit motionless, stare straight ahead, no radio, no comments from or to passengers allowed, no looking at anything but the road and vehicles in front and in the mirrors and only complete and utter silence and dedication to the cause of driving.

40

If you’re going to wear such a thing and carry on phone conversations in public, don’t then interrupt your phone conversation to ask me a question. I’m going to assume you are talking to your phone friend and ignore you. Don’t get mad at me.