To be helpful today, when an email went out from HR this morning asking for some assistance because an admin was out, I volunteered to help with the dictation.
What a mistake that was! This particular attorney is a nice guy, but his dictation methods SUCK. I guess he always presumes that his secretary will be the only one doing the transcription, and so he doesn’t feel the need to give details like the name of the client or the case he’s working on. There were ten dictations under his name, and I listened to (and put back in the queue) the first four jobs, completely slackjawed because I had NO IDEA what he was talking about. It was complete gibberish.
I went over to his secretary’s desk and found a random pile of folders and documents and realized those things were what he kept referring to in his dictation. At least when Mr. BIL does his dictation he says, “Okay, you’ll find this job in the first slot of my organizer in my office. The client is 12345. This is a memo/letter/email going to Mr. Smith at the following address…blah blah blah.” This way it doesn’t matter WHO is doing the dictation for Mr. BIL – they’ll know exactly what the job is. Not so with this attorney I’m doing stuff for today.
At one point when I was still sitting here in the dark, a paralegal walked over and said, “You look stressed.” I told her I had volunteered to do this attorney’s dictation and without me saying anything else she laughed and said, “I know you won’t be doing THAT again!” Heh. She’s right.
