speakerphone should be abolished!

[Argus]

The only time I use my phone's speakerphone option is if the power is out.

I use it while waiting on hold, so I can do something else while waiting.

If I am driving, I don't answer the phone. Period.

When I first got a cell phone, I did not consider hands-free options at all. I did make a point of confirming that voice mail would be free.

[Sunshine]

My phone will either hang up or hit a random number on the keypad so I try to use the speaker as much as I can. But, I'm sane about it and make . most of my calls while I'm not driving!

[MoonCat]

I hate this!! The software company that makes our crappy computer program used to have conference calls with supervisors on this, and since our supers were sitting in open cubicles, those of us out on the floor trying to take customer calls had to listen to all of this loud conversation, which made it difficult to concentrate.

Then there are the customers who do this. Every time I have ever had to say "I can't hear you" they turn it off and say "Oh sorry, I was on speaker, is that better?" So they clearly weren't doing anything that meant they NEEDED to use it, for some reason they just did it.

[Crossbow]

On the other side, I had a co-worker (had as of yesterday. That's an entirely separate topic.) that would use nothing but speakerphone in the office. He had it turned up as loud as possible so he could walk around while on a call. And he had no "inside voice" whatsoever.

I swear, I could hear his conversations through two closed fire doors. It got so bad that at one point, IT actually disabled his speakerphone. This lasted about a month until upper management got tired of his constant complaining and made them turn it back on.

It wasn't as bad in our new building. Either he figured out he was pissing everyone off, or he wasn't walking around as much...