Sometimes I hate transcription…yes, I said it…sometimes I HATE transcription. There are days I would rather clean chemical toilets for a living than have to sit down and transcribe an interview with a person who has a very poor grasp of the English language at best.
Well, maybe I’m taking it too far (because I never want to clean a chemical toilet), but having to transcribe a difficult dictator (in medical transcription) or a poorly conducted interview…or a less than articulate interviewee (in media transcription)…is pretty much the equivalent of cleaning a chemical toilet.
Okay, enough of the toilet talk…
There are also the days when I slept poorly the night before or I just don’t feel good that it seems like I’m back at day one of transcribing. Then there are days that I feel like I was born to transcribe. The dictators/interviewees are great, and my hands seem to fly across the keys as if I’m infused with some super-human typing talent.
Now, back to the bad days…how do I know when it’s not going to be a good transcription day? Here are just a few examples:
- I put extra spaces between words. It feels like my thumb is made of lead. When I hit the space key for some inexplicable reason I keep it on the space key a few milliseconds too long, and I end up with two or three spaces between words. I’m at a loss to explain this phenomenon. It happened to me again just a few days ago. I got so disturbed that I started Googling neurological disorders, because there was nothing I could do to stop the extra spaces…even with fierce concentration. I was tired that day, but I was beginning to think I was getting ready to have a stroke or something.
- I’m asked to transcribe an inner city kid’s interview or a kid from some rural area in the South. Don’t get me wrong. I love spoken word poets, and country kids who come from remote areas like I did, but OH MY WORD…trying to decide how the words (and what words) are going come rolling out of their mouths is next to impossible! Once you become a seasoned transcriptionist you start to anticipate speech patterns…especially in well-spoken people. But when you are put in the situation where you either can’t understand a subject well and/or the person uses a lot of regional slang in their speech it sets up a very frustrating transcription session, because you can never achieve “flow” in transcription.
- Trying to transcribe in a very cold work environment. I currently work in an area where there is lots of expensive high-tech video equipment. Because this equipment needs to be kept as cool as possible they keep our department as cool as possible. Temperatures can range from the mid to lower sixties. I’ve pretty well acclimated to the mid sixties, but when it gets to the lower sixties my fingers become nothing more than numb, useless appendages extending from my hands…not conducive to transcription. I’m thinking about investing in those hand warmers that hunters use…the ones that you take out of the pack and smack to activate. Yes, that’s a good idea.
- Trying to t ranscribe in a noisy environment. I have transcribed in all sorts of environments…medical records departments with and without windows, in the comfort of my own home, in a private office, in a “steno pool” where five transcriptionists were crammed in a room not much larger than your average-sized master bedroom and in a corporate “cube world.” I have recently moved out of a semi-private office back into a “cube world”. Working in a busy television production environment our “cube world” sometimes resembles more of a newsroom…depending on the challenges and deadlines of the day. So, that is not always conducive to easy transcription. I have done what I can to cope. I recently invested in a pair of noise-reducing ear phones, and that has helped a bit when I’m trying to meet a deadline while people are shouting at each other over their cubes. I’ve also learned to tune people out…a trait that causes my husband great irritation at times.
- Trying to transcribe in a distracting environment. This kind of goes along with the noisy environment, but because there is usually a more human element to it I thought it deserved a separate elaboration. In my nineteen years of transcription I have always had to work with folks who truly don’t understand what it takes to do what I do. In my current job I have a “slash” (/) job meaning there’s more to my title than just “transcriptionist”. I’m also an administrative assistant. For me these two different parts of my job require two different mindsets. For the administrative assistant side I have to switch to a multi-task mindset. I will often have two or three things cooking, but because I have to wait for input, signatures, and approvals I start one thing…get that going…and go to the next item on my list…you get the point. For the transcription side of my job I have to switch my mindset to a focused, tune-everything-else-out, mindset to be sure I turn out a quality product that does not include snippets of what my next-door-cube neighbor said to me while I was transcribing. (I actually caught myself the other day transcribing what someone had just said to me…yikes! Glad I caught that one!). So, at times it’s very difficult to try and balance the two sides of my job. Because I’m an “admin” people are always coming to my desk asking this and that. It’s a cross I must bear. I love the admin. side of my job, and really, I excel at it. It’s opened up talents I never new I had, but it is different from how I’ve had to operate in the past when “transcription by the pound” was how I got paid. How I handle the distraction is by letting folks know I have a deadline. That usually works, because we all work on deadlines, and telling them I will handle their request during the “admin” part of my day usually does the trick if it’s not urgent. I try to divide my days between admin and transcription (when possible), and that seems to help; however, I always deal with the human element who doesn’t understand why I can’t check their expense report and transcribe at the same time. I cope with this by gently educating them about what I do even when deep down inside I wish I could just shoo them away from my desk with a broom.
There are other things that can cause you to hate transcription, but that’s my short (albeit long) list of what can make transcription miserable if you don’t learn coping techniques to offset them. My biggest coping technique is telling myself that I’m just having a bad day, and tomorrow will be better…and usually it is. The only times I’ve ditched a transcription job out of hate was when everyday was horribly the same…unrealistic expectations, very poor dictators, very poor transcription environment, and difficult people. If every day is a living hell then it’s time to decide whether or not the job or the workplace is for you. If you like your transcription job 90% of the time then it’s what you should be doing. If not, it’s time to move on to greener transcriptionist pastures or on to another career.
