What do you do when you’re working from home and have called into a conference call and need to mute your phone so your dogs don’t bark into the phone but your phone is Old School and doesn’t have a “locking” mute feature and you don’t want to sit there holding your thumb or other digit on the button until it’s numb by the time the hour-long call is over?
Simple: You fashion a MacGyver-style mute button and voila! Your Old School phone can now run with the big boys of the 21st Century. And you can walk away from the phone and use your hands to do other things like write in your blog rather than sitting there not twiddling your thumbs because one of them is in use and getting sore.
Materials needed to craft your very own MacGyver Mute Button:
- Old School Phone with “non-locking” mute button
- Solid rubber band that will stretch around entire width of phone
- 100th-Anniversary Swiss Army pocket knife or other similar tool to use as a “raiser” to compensate for distance between other dangerous buttons like redial that you don’t accidentally want to hit for the 30 people in the room and 5 other people calling in to your meeting to hear
- Wall hanging or other heavy item to place atop Swiss Army pocket knife or other device used in previous step and anchor on table
Note: It is very important that the area where your Old School phone resides is surrounded by random tools like those described above should you find yourself in an unplanned situation where a MacGyver Mute Button is necessary.
Good luck, and may the Mute Button Gods be with you to relieve you of your tethered relationship with your Old School phone.
Alternate plan: Get your company to give you a 21st-Century phone with “locking” mute button.
