The Transcriptionist's Nightmare

This entire week I have been in training for my new job: a work-at-home transcriptionist! I am SO excited because this is my dream job. I have wanted to work from home for years and even studied medical transcription. So it's so great to now get the opportunity to do this. Yes, I'm a bit of a hermit, what can I say?

I am going to be doing legal transcription of insurance companies and law firms for interviews they have with the clients. They record them and send them on to us to transcribe them. We get them from all 50 states. So you can imagine what we will have to deal with on a regular basis. Dialects, accents, you name it, we'll have to deal with it.

So in class, we were given some examples that the company I now work for has actually run into. I hope these come out in writing as well as they did when I was told about them!

#1: A man in Boston was interviewed about an accident. He was asked to describe his day. He started out by saying that his day was a "parade of horrors." However, in his thick Boston accent, things got a bit changed around. The transcriptionist typed that his day was a parade of W-H-O-R-E-S.

#2: A man in the deep south was describing his route he was on when the accident happened. He said quite plainly that he had passed the "far station." The transcriptionist thought what's a far station? Oh wait: FIRE station!

#3: This one happened to a friend of mine who is not a transcriptionist. She was on the basketball team in high school, and their coach was a short man from New York. His wife also hailed from the city that never sleeps. She came in to the gym one day to see him. My friend had never seen her before, so she didn't know who she was. She asked her if she could help her, and the woman said she was looking for her husband. My friend wasn't sure who she could mean, so she asked her to describe him to her. She replied that he was "shoart and bold." My friend thought bold? That's an interesting way to describe a person. Then it hit her. Short and bald!

#4: My personal favorite. I think I've actually heard this one in joke form somewhere. A medical transcriptionist is having a really hard time with a word her doctor has said on his tape. She is desperately looking for the diagnosis of pholenfremetry. She tries different spellings but to no avail. Finally, at her wit's end, she goes to the doctor and asks what exactly is that diagnosis. The doctor looks at the paper, then listens to the tape. "Ah, I remember this one," he finally says. "The man had fallen from a tree."

Any other stories floating around out there? It'd be fun to hear them!