Many things can ruin relationships: cheating, money, one party’s constant desire to be in an open relationship when the other party is not okay with it. But, in the last couple months, I’ve discovered a new source of relationship destruction: the noise-cancelling feature on Apple’s new AirPods. For some reason, within the confines of our quiet, quaint one bedroom apartment, my girlfriend has opted to repeatedly use this feature while on Zoom calls…and it is ruining my life.
“HEY, HOW ARE YOU GUYS DOING THIS MORNING?”
“DID YOU GET THAT REPORT I SENT?”
“HOW DO YOU SPELL SYNONYMOUS?”
My days are consumed with the constant roar of my girlfriend unknowingly yelling at her coworkers, completely unaware of how loud she is speaking. No amount of old-fashioned noise canceling technology on my end has been able to shield me from the corporate, animalistic yelling that my girlfriend engages in Monday-Friday every week. I decided to measure the decibels of her calls this week, and found that all of the following things are all quieter than her Zoom speaking voice:
1) Monster Truck rallies
2) The local emergency alarm test on Wednesdays at noon
3) A dog’s squeal when you step on its tail
4) The high school marching band practicing at 6am outside your window
5) A skydiver not using a parachute and just landing on a 10 foot strip of bubble wrap
6) Nightly fireworks at your resort in Cancun
7) 150 smoke detectors whose batteries all need changed at the same time
8) An AC/DC concert when Thunderstruck is playing
9) Getting ice from the dispenser in the fridge in the middle of the night
10) The Indianapolis 500
11) The first note of the Fox Searchlight song being played in an IMAX movie theater with Dolby Surround Sound
12) An angry 5th grade baseball coach blowing his whistle when his players refuse to hit the cutoff man
13) A 4-wheeler revving its engine after getting stuck in the mud because the driver didn’t realize that it had rained more than the forecast had predicted
14) Mike Breen yelling “BANG!” in a playoff game
15) Airplane crashes
16) A socially distant mardi gras horns band who has to play extra loud because they’re 20+ feet from their audience
17) Telling your grandma what you had for dinner over the phone for the 4th time when she isn’t wearing her hearing aids
18) A struggle rapper playing his own mixtape through his car speakers at a stop light in his 2001 Honda Civic that has a spoiler that appears to have originally been from an entirely different brand of car
19) The Battle of Gettysburg
20) The entire rest of the world simultaneously on a Zoom call
It seems my only hope is to get a noise cancelling pair of AirPods for myself…This was Apple’s plan all along.