Here's my philosophy on speaker phone use: It should basically never happen. Well, the only time it should happen is when you are alone in a sound-proof area, or when everyone in earshot (and I mean everyone) needs to hear the conversation. Or, maybe if you need your hands to disarm a nuclear weapon or something, but other than that I can't really think of a need for it.
It most DEFINITELY should NOT happen when you're sitting in a very public office space and you have nothing stopping you from holding the handset up to your face. You should definitely not be using it to talk to the IT Help Desk when you're having problems using Excel. I'm pretty sure that helping you learn the most basic of computer programs is not their job, anyway. *death stares across cube*
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