# People who always have twisted, curled-up, and knotted phone cords. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 20, 2007, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-always-have-twisted-curled-up-and-knotted-phone-cords/400909 "2007-04-20T09:58:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2007, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-always-have-twisted-curled-up-and-knotted-phone-cords/400909/21 "2007-04-22T02:26:21Z")
[QUOTE=Maastricht] Do you sit across a co-worker with a tangled phonecord, why yours is neat? If so, what’s \*your \* theory? [/QUOTE] My last job involved 24 hr crews which shared desks. Every day my phone cord was so twisted up I could hardly anwswer the phone (depending on who sat there on the last 2 shifts). I’m talking seriously tangled. There is no way it involved a single twist with each phone call. There were simply too many rotations. Every day I would slowly untangle the mess so it again it was a single loop of coiled wire. I often wondered if the person answered the phone while spinning in the chair. I admit there were day’s I fantasized about strangling the person with the cord and until promises were made. That and throwing open containers of liquid into the trash (coffee, sodas). Same fantasy. I have my own desk now so I don’t have to put up with it anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Malienation](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Malienation](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malienation)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2007, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-always-have-twisted-curled-up-and-knotted-phone-cords/400909/22 "2007-04-22T02:35:46Z")
Take a pass on the phone cord unravelling doo-dads. They work okay, but they’re mechanically weak. One accidental bump onto a hard surface and they snap right off. The phone dangling trick always works for me. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2007, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-always-have-twisted-curled-up-and-knotted-phone-cords/400909/23 "2007-04-22T03:23:41Z")
I don’t dangle the handset. What I do is I unplug the handset cord from either the handset or the base unit, stretch it, then let it hang freely. The cord goes back to its unstressed stable state – which yes, with the passing of time will no longer be “like new” because the materials will lose elasticity – and I don’t risk banging the handset on the floor. Then I plug it back in. ---
**Author:** ![tarragon918](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d26b3c/32.png) [@tarragon918](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tarragon918)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2007, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-always-have-twisted-curled-up-and-knotted-phone-cords/400909/24 "2007-04-22T06:12:11Z")
My phone cord is always tangled up - I regularly have to call tech support to get new cords. The phone tech also explained that it’s the switching from hand to hand (of the handset) - or ear to ear - that causes it to get tangled up. The last time, it was so bad that my phone calls were being disconnected because of it. This time they gave me a short cord. Heh, guess that might work since there’s less cord to get tangled? ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2007, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-always-have-twisted-curled-up-and-knotted-phone-cords/400909/25 "2007-04-22T06:27:45Z")
I went to the sale of items in the Marlene Dietrich estate in Beverly Hills shortly after her death - they were selling everything and what caught my eye were two of those godawful, standard AT&T, beige wall phones - and each had an extension cord that was about twenty feet long that were tangled and stretched out beyond repair. I remembered thinking, “did nobody ever tell Marlene there were such things as cordless phones?” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-always-have-twisted-curled-up-and-knotted-phone-cords/400909.md?page=1)