Speaker Phones 1

[jcrater]

I work in an area filled with cubicles (the ones between 5 & 6 ft high). I guess it depends on my mood, but sometimes I just can't tune out my neighbors using their speakerphones. Some folks use this feature for all calls, even when they don't need their hands free for other stuff. For this reason, I rarely use mine. When I do, and it's a conference call, there's always one person who can barely be heard, so I have to turn the volume way up to hear him...then someone else pipes in and it's way too loud.

Headsets are finally starting to be used around here. That should eventually help things...

 

[Stella740pl]

We've recently got brand-new telephones for everyone (most people are sitting in low cubicles), and even had a brief training on using them and all their advanced features. It's been couple of month or so, but a (not-so-subtle) sound of them buzzing still startle me every time, and from 2 steps away I can't recognize my phone from others (old ones had a choice of 3-4 nice melodies in 2-3 loudness settings).

But the worst was one of the advanced features, highly praised and emphasized by the trainer: speaker phone function until the person you call peak up (after that, you must peak up, too, as there are no actual speaker microphones) - it lets you backspace and correct misdialed number before it actually start to dial, and a lot of other things.

The first day or two were awful, with all happy users trying their new options, so in addition to the annoying buzz, you had to listen to multiple key presses, busy signals and respondents. It made me cringe, but I didn't say anything to anyone.

Then, at once, it all stopped, and everyone went back to their old phone habits. I guess, I was not the only one annoyed.