@beardalaxy @dave
Don't know if the issue is solely that the bluetooth standard is bad. My hunch is that it's a combination of bluetooth being badly implemented by manufacturers and people using it poorly.

Bluetooth devices are supposed to be able to remember and easily reconnect to whatever other bluetooth thing they were connected to last. Makes things easier for stuff like bluetooth mice, or if signal breaks down and comes back.
If the user doesn't want this to happen, it is up to him to break this connection manually, to unpair them in some way.
But manufacturers also rarely make this process easy or convenient, and then there's the double mistake of: if I'm playing music on a phone to some bluetooth earbuds or even wired ones, then a different paired bluetooth speaker comes in range, the audio should NOT automatically switch to the new one. At most maybe have a prompt notifying you of the option.

One example that I encounter, is that I have a pair of earbuds, that if I manually disconnect (but not unpair) from my phone and then shut them off, they remember that disconnect, and won't autoconnect the second I turn them on again.
But a separate, cheaper device, doesn't remember that disconnect, and will ALWAYS try to connect to the phone when I turn it on. So for this device, I end up pairing and unpairing quite often, depending on whether I want it to reconnect next time around.

As for the greentext story... Apple probably plays fast & loose when it comes to respecting bluetooth standards. Remember how you can't send files between iPhone and Android? Well, I don't think they gave much of a crap about safety & privacy when they made their pods pair seamlessly in their ecosystem.
I wouldn't be surprised if the story is based on true events. Maybe grandma didn't die, but someone heard something they shouldn't have.