Tales from the Medical Transcription Queue

[DesertRose]

So normally my job as a medical transcriptionist is...well...routine.  I do a lot of repetitive tasks (which I find rather soothing) in the course of a day's work.

Today, I was transcribing for the doctor for whom I work most of the time, and I run up against a 10-second dictation, which is phenomenally short.  (Like, usually, if one of his dictations is under 45 seconds, it's usually because he accidentally cut off the Dictaphone before he meant to.)

So I download the audio file, get his template ready to be typed into, prepare for "This patient's name is..." and hit the play button on my foot pedal...

...only to hear a male voice (not the doctor's) sing, very loudly, "I like big butts and I cannot lie.  My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hun! Dr. (the usual dictator's surname) has a big butt."

After I was able to stop laughing (which took a good little while), I asked my contact at the dictation company just what in the merry hell I was supposed to do with this audio file (I believe I said something along the lines of "Someone in the office appears to have played a practical joke on Dr. Surname because I have a 10-second dictation full of pop song lyrics."), because I clearly cannot transcribe "Baby Got Back" along with a mild insult into the template.  My contact told me to suspend the job (code for "Put it where an admin can deal with it") and march on.

So I'm marching on in the next dictation in the job queue when my contact IMs me back and said, "Thanks.  That was funny.  I needed the laugh."

As I said, most of the time, my job is very routine.  Today was NOT. 

[revanne]

Sounds as though someone somewhere was a bit bored but managed to brighten up a few folks days 

[DesertRose]

My suspicion is that it was one of the office staff being silly, but it was entirely too funny. 

[Jerusha]

Probably a good thing you work from home, rather than having to explain the laughter to an entire office.  Sometimes it just can't be suppressed. 

[DesertRose]

True, Jerusha, because I about fell out of my desk chair laughing.