Should I email my MD

[marrymeadam]

One of the MD's in my company is still in the dark ages and likes to laud around dictating into his stupid dictaphone for some mug to type up for him. He isn't in my office but as I am the only admin on a certain day of the week I have to do the stupid things once a week. I hate it, the main problems I have are that he clearly eats whilst doing his dictation so you can hear him clearing his mouth/teeth when he is talking. I can't stand mouth sounds they make me violent. And the worst thing is he tells me how to spell things. Today already he has told me how to spell Matt and adage, he treats me like I'm stupid. Do you think it would be unreasonable to email him and point out that I am a university educated individual that actually has the same letters after my name as him and am perfectly capable of spelling simple words without him having to tell me? And to ask that he doesn't eat whilst dictating or I won't be able to do it anymore?!

But when he dictates he doesn’t know who will pick up the job, so it’s not about you as an individual. Also, it’s easy to get into he habit of spelling things out, especially Names after you have corrected a million drafts where the typist got something wrong that you thought you had said clearly- it becomes as automatic as saying “stop” or “close brackets”. My industry used to dictate everything as standard, it’s not done much now but OMG some of things people typed showed that they were not thinking at all, the sound just went straight to their fingers, IYSWIM.

The food eating is from though. You are well within your rights to ask for him to stop that.

Grim not from.

Oh and by the way, would you have been offended if he had said “lording it- l-o-r-d…”?

Sorry but is this really valuable use of company time and/or the salary paid to admin staff? He can do this himself. I would tell him about apps he can use.

I really love the idea of you transcribing his disgusting eating noises! Maybe just typing it that way but not sending it would help you deal with the justifiable irritation?

In business you can’t just download apps and use them. Confidentiality, cost, compatibility with other systems, cyber security, etc etc .

Plus the words turkey, voting and Christmas come to mind…

Don’t patronise me about “in business”. I work in an underfunded government department that deals with confidential data and even we have access to a speech to text service.

So not business then. Public sector.

And you clearly have the access arranged centrally by management, not randomly downloaded by individuals. That was my point.

You work for the JobCentre and yet don’t appear to have a great understanding of what differentiates an MD’s job and the value of his time to the company, and the job of an administrator and the relative value of their time in comparison?

Apps are crap for accurate dictation, the same as AI is crap for effective copyrighting. They can’t capture nuance or context, which is what humans who transcribe (and copyright) professionally are really good at.

*copywrite

Just on the dictation: people who dictate a lot do spell words that are misheard rather than thinking you can spell so it COULD be that - specifying MATT rather than MAT and ADAGE rather than AVERAGE etc.

I used to work for surveyors and they all did this.

^^ Excellent example above. I’m a human who immediately clocked that autocorrect had used “copyright” rather than the correct “copywrite.” An app wouldn’t have been able to do that, because it doesn’t know context.

I suspect years of being asked ‘what’s a pilaster? How do you spell it? Is that KNOB weed? Terrazzo? Or Terracotta?’ informed their method.

Just quickly he always knows who will be doing it, he says hello '@marrymeadam' or which ever name for the others. It's not a huge company.

I wouldn’t mention the spelling. Who cares if he thinks he needs to spell things out. Let him waste his breath. The eating would drive me insane though! I hate mouth noises too and could murder over it on a bad day 😆 I think I’d have to say something but would do it face to face. Maybe put it to him like “what were you eating on that last recording? It was really distracting me thinking about what could be so loud”

if he’s got any pride he’ll be embarrassed and stop doing it

It was fair enough really, your suggestion absolutely would not be allowed at my work. I know the civil service is a bit cavalier, but when there’s actual money on the line things have to be done properly.

Or… find a really gross bit and ask play it back to him because you can’t quite make it out

Next time you type a document just type a note at the bottom saying “I’d be grateful if you’d stop eating while dictating as I find it hard to hear your dictation clearly”. And put loads of [inaudible] in the text near the eating bits.