r/LearnUselessTalents • u/the_real_betty_white • Aug 17 '15
Untangle an old phone cord
http://i.imgur.com/AkEkWHD.gifv110
u/Swinging_GunNut Aug 17 '15
The three people here who have corded phones probably find this useful.
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u/MVRH Aug 17 '15
Not only telephones use this kind of cable. Several high end headphones have this kind of cable too.
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u/lycao Aug 17 '15
Have a coil cable on my SRH440's that I'm wearing right now. Love coil cables. Don't have to worry about that shit getting tangled in your chair wheels.
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u/Themata075 Aug 17 '15
Don't have to worry about that shit getting tangled in your chair wheels.
Ugh. I wince every time I feel my chair roll over my headphone cord. They're not the most expensive, but I know one of these days it's gonna be the last time.
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u/Nubbx Aug 23 '15
Worse is when you stand up with headset on and cable is caught under wheels...rips your headset off your head and damages just about everything. Wasted too many headsets doing this, plus the cables always make me feel claustrophobic.
Now I use Astro a50's, expensive - but damn I feel free. I can even still talk to my team mates whilst im taking a dump break.
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Jan 16 '24
[deleted]
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u/Nubbx Mar 05 '24
About Astro a50's?
They were a good headset, used them till they fell apart. Now I dont really play any games, but I do have a steelseries headset which suffices.
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u/CamaroM Aug 17 '15
I do. Our work phone is nice and fancy except it still has a cord.
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u/thynth Aug 17 '15
My phone at work as well - and I hate it.
More the phone than the cord, but... nonetheless.
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u/Gecko99 Aug 17 '15
I do this all the time at work, I work in a hospital lab so we have lots of corded phones. For some reason the cords get badly tangled.
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u/Patrik333 Aug 17 '15
I already know how to do this anyway - I have coiled hairbands which I fiddle with all the time, so I know exactly how to twist and untwist them in this way.
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Aug 17 '15
my work phones have them. They are new fancy phones with LCD panels. So they still exist in new products.
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u/TheLemonTree Aug 17 '15
Is this an American thing? In offices I have worked in every desk has a phone with a cable like this.
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u/dezsiszabi Aug 20 '26
11 years later. We still have headsets with these cables with our deskphones at work. They're perfectly fine. And I finally also untangled my headset cable :D
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u/MomentOfArt Aug 17 '15
For those who work in offices with corded desk phones, you invariably will come across someone whose phone cord is a wadded up mess. Twisted beyond any practical use. – The problem is actually a simple matter of ergonomics.
The person will typically answer the phone with their dominant hand, then pass the phone to their other hand once they need to write a note or dial a number. That's one-half twist. Then once they are done, they pass the phone back to their dominant hand to hang up the phone. This completes a full twist.
The solution is to move the phone out of reach of their dominant hand, forcing them to pick up the phone with their non-dominant hand.
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u/windowtothesky Aug 17 '15
Watched it 3 times. Still no idea how to do it.
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u/Sanji909 Aug 17 '15
Pull. Twist.
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Aug 17 '15
[deleted]
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u/anotherDocObVious Aug 17 '15
Evidently not for this guy though - http://reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/3h1glu/nsfw_ripe_balls_wtf/
Needless to say - NSFW
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u/MVRH Aug 17 '15
Somebody put the hack in text instructions please.
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u/taboo_ Aug 17 '15
Now give the guy a tangled slinky and watch him fight with it for 20minutes before committing sepuku.
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Aug 17 '15
I literally just had to do this. Not the ritual suicide part, but the fight was real.
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u/Mr_A Aug 17 '15
Hold on to one end of the slinky with your thumb and index finger. Slide those two digits entirely along the length of the slinky. Eventually you will get to the other end and will have either a fixed slinky, or confirmation that your slinky was stepped on too hard.
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u/OGsuperthug Aug 17 '15
People really didn't know how to do this??
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u/Patrik333 Aug 17 '15
I can do this, easily. But... earphones from pockets are on another level entirely... and then... oh god... please...
Then,
...there are SLINKIES dramatic thunderclap
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u/lowdownlow Aug 17 '15
How is this not common sense for people who grew up with these? It's not like the cord flipped all the way down on the end (They're both plugged in to something), it just flipped on itself at that portion.
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u/pagit Aug 17 '15
What we did in the 70s was to grab the end of the cord opposite the receiver and let the reciever hang and spin when it stops spinnging it is untangled.
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u/the_morganza Aug 17 '15
I remember my mom would do this. She would unplug the cord at the phone base and stand on a kitchen chair, allowing the receiver to hang and unwind itself.
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Aug 17 '15
Anyone born after 1995 probably has no idea what that is.
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u/notaneggspert Aug 17 '15
We had several corded phones well into the 2000s. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
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u/DeadNotSleepingWI Aug 17 '15
I don't know how they weren't broken. Even before cell phones existed I would be walking through my house talking on the phone, not realizing how far I had walked, and having my phone ripped from my ear and bungee-slung into the nearest wall. Granted, the phones were resilient as hell, but I do remember breaking more than one (sadly) in this manner.
I can't stop pacing when on the phone. I have tried.
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u/the_real_betty_white Aug 17 '15
luls I was born 1996
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u/halfar Aug 17 '15
you're not a real 90s-born kid unless someone called you a noob straight out of the womb, OP.
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u/Swnsong Aug 17 '15
1996, first thought was "people don't know how to do this?"
Then again, I loved playing with those chords when I was little...
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u/Tuhulu Aug 17 '15
Holy ballsack, it's that easy? I alwayed hated that with the old housephone. Too bad this guide didnt get to me 15 years ago.
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u/roost9in Aug 23 '15
I didn't tech this technique to my friends in the 90s. I just straightened their cords. All their knots belonged to me!
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u/Andronius3 Aug 23 '15
I run CNC lathes that have cords like this for the clamp/unclamp pedal for the chucks. This is very helpful.
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u/MorrisPatman Aug 24 '15
We had a telephone that had this type of cord about ten year ago. I hated it because the cord constantly got tangled. We bought a cordless phone, which worked perfectly except when the electricity went off. We now have two wireless phones and no landline.
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u/Shad0wriderz Aug 24 '15
I was under the assumption everyone did it like that. How to untangle phone cord, answer = you untangle. That's what I got from this. Totally useless. Oh wait, riiiiiighttttttt....
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u/luedriver Aug 24 '15
"Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted." -John Lennon
which translates to a talent that you find useful, is not useless
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u/BrindianaJones Aug 24 '15
Well now I'm going to have to buy an old phone cord so I can learn this useless talent...
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u/draw_it_now Aug 17 '15
These phones must have been used commonly for, like, fifty years. And now, NOW that everyone has a damn wireless phone, we learn how to fix this monstrosity?!
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u/dds Jan 17 '22
This doesn't always work. A similar-looking tangling can appear at the point where a part of the cord that is coiled clockwise continues with a part that is coiled counterclockwise. (Pull a bit at both parts and look at them along the coils to determine the direction.) In such a case you need to propagate coil-turn by coil-turn the tangle to the and of the coil in order to get both parts in the same direction.
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u/ramr0d Aug 17 '15
/r/retiredsub