I agree, but between that and most of my co-workers currently using their laptops built-in mics, I'd rather deal with the noise from the earbuds.

The worse is laptop mic + speakers. If you noticed the people speaking to you stop mid-sentence, it's because hearing themselves with some timelag tends to make them stop speaking.

Thanks to some people, everyone can experience speech jamming for free! https://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1202/1202.6106v1.pdf