Those awful headsets are Joe R's., Mesaba's old DO, revenge. The story, as I've heard it: In the wake of the Mesaba/Pinnacle merger some things changed, Mesaba (XJ) used to have company headsets on each aircraft, one per side and a spare for the jumpseater or fed, Pinnacle expected you to have your own. About 4/5 of the XJ guys had their own set anyhow, but the rest used the ship ones. With the merger, XJ went over to the Pinnacle system, as I recall no financial assistance was offered to cover the expense; as result company headsets (usually the spare) started to wander off. I think it annoyed Joe to have to explain this to the Memphis brain trust more than anything, but annoy him it did. So, instead of the old, but passable David clamps we had, he got those things we have now. Joe's thinking was no one would be caught dead with those in their flight bag, he wasn't wrong.

The real downside to them is that they really are bad, like unusable junk. We have a spare in case your headset goes TU, which mine has in flight before, those things simply didn't work. Unfortunately they have stuck around.