I am a real estate agent which means I take 7,000 phone calls a day. Scrolling through my Recents is enough to give my thumb a cramp. I also drive, walk, type and text every minute I’m awake, I can’t spend my life with one hand holding my phone on my ear. My elbow would rot and fall off. I also CANNOT suffer having a earpiece sitting in my ear. It’s been a personal problem since they came out and I know people love them and if you have one and love it then terrific. Every time I’ve worn one the urge to punch myself in the face is overwhelming.
A colleague introduced me to the ways of the neck headset (neckset?) and forever I am chang-ed. (Christine’s is different, the earpieces pull out of the ends, it’s more rigid, and it’s a very pretty color.) It’s like casual Borg meets the Secret Service. I tuck the whole thing into my collar and the wires stick up a little but who cares? It’s comfortable and bluetooth and NOT ON MY FREAKING EAR. The LG TonePro Bluetooth headset.
The earpieces magnet into the ends of the headset. The speakers are somewhere in those pointy bits too. It’s been months and I still haven’t bothered to figure the buttons out. Forward is on, backwards is off I think, there’s a volume and a next/previous. Word of warning: if you push the answer/hang up button in some sequence you will either answer/hang up, summon Siri, or call the last person you talked to. Which is only a minor inconvenience in most cases, “Whoops, hi sorry, didn’t mean to call you back.”
However. If you ended your call in a less than savory manner, and then yanked the earpiece from your ear and started complaining about how that person smelled, rest assured, they can hear you with crystal clarity and you aren’t yet aware of the war you’ve just started.
I also use it when I’m working in the yard or going to the gym. The yard is because weedwackers are loud and angry. The gym is because the gym is one of the places I wouldn’t be sad to see fall into a giant sinkhole, so I use it there to listen to ebooks. And I only listen to fun, descriptive books that I know I will love. If I had to listen to a businessy book club book I may as well eat a bowl of glass shards. So the last one I downloaded was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, narrated by Stephen Fry (who narrated the movie).
I’m seeing them more and more often now, particularly on service technicians and construction workers, which makes perfect sense. Keep your phone on your person someplace safe while you’re working, but you can still answer calls or use Siri by just touching the headset which is safely around your neck. Plus they hold a charge for quite a while; I just plug mine in at night with all my other devices and it’s ready to go in the morning.
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Kristina Watkins, Summit Sotheby's International Realty 