Image via WikipediaI work for a company that repairs foodservice equipment including espresso machines.
I’m their database administrator which is a fancy title for someone who makes sure the stuff in the database is consistent and right and who creates all those fancy reports, graphs and charts the big guys like to use in their presentations and stuff.
Our little company is still a bit technologically challenged, so our technicians use paper forms to write their information on and those are faxed in nightly to a fax server and a company in India transcribes them into the database using a program called Dynamics Great Plains (remember the nightmarish upgrade???).
Well, I created a report to pull the calls with the most common misspellings on them and it gets sent to the supervisor in Delhi every day so they can go back and correct them. While I could do the corrections as a part of the report task, I originally hoped that by going back and making the corrections manually, they would eventually make fewer of them.
EVERY SINGLE DAY there are at least 20 calls that espresso is misspelled on — and in the grand scheme of things, we don’t actually work on that many espresso machines! Now, I know the techs’ handwriting sucks – I’ve read those forms, so do have first hand knowledge of this fact. I also know that their spelling is rather challenged, but if I can figure out what they’re talking about, I don’t understand how these data entry people can’t figure it out as well. And quite often, (if I have the time and desire) I see that espresso is NOT misspelled on the record, but was when it was typed into the program.
I see “eXpresso“, “esspresso”, “presso” and my all-time favorite, “espression”. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the same couple of people every time, too. You would think they would learn.
Spelling is something that I’m super picky about with grammar coming in a fairly close second. I can forgive grammatical errors more readily than I can spelling errors – it’s just too easy to check spelling before you click that “save” button. Grammar is a little trickier when you’re not a native English speaker.
One of the reasons I’m picky is because I have to pull reports based on the equipment repaired. While I have a nice set of data for sites we’ve already visited and done a repair on a particular piece of equipment, it’s those places where we’ve never been before that make up 30%-40% of the calls I need to be looking at for those reports. That means I have to look in the call notes which is where these misspellings are. It’s nearly impossible to code for every single possible misspelling there might be, so I really need those notes to be spelled as correctly as they can be.
I wish we had an espresso machine in the office — I could sure use a cup right now!
Is spelling an issue with you? Am I being hyper critical? Should I forgo the espresso for decaf?
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Calling espresso “expresso” is one of my pet peeves! It seems that it’s not just a spelling error, but that’s how a lot of people pronounce it, too. Someone at the shelter even named one of the cats Expresso. Aaaaarrrrgggg!
I’m a freak about spelling too. And I can completely relate to database issues stemming from dirty data. Arrrgghhh! At my last job, I was able to be draconian about it… not so at the new place. Of course, at the last place, we had two databases. At the new place we have… um… two dozen? I’m only responsible for two of them, thank goodness.
I don’t worry so much about when people send me things with spelling or gramatical errors. Don’t get me started on their speaking skills though. Why do people say “Warsh”? Is there an R in WASH? Or what about NUCULAR? No, I’m pretty sure it’s NuclEAR.
Whew! Thank goodness — if even a CAT can spell espresso properly, then maybe there is hope — thank you, Daisy!
Kelly — just ONE database is keeping me hopping (well if truth were told, there are actually 6 db’s but only one that’s really used a lot). It’s the flack I get for the GIGO reporting that happens that truly sucks. (for you not into acronyms, GIGO is “garbage in, garbage out”.
Gandy — yes, I’ve heard “warsh” and since my son is a nuclear engineer, we hear “nucular” or “nucklr” quite often. I’m not going to tell you how I pronounced Worcestershire for YEARS before learning the correct pronunciation, but let me tell you that’s not a word that speaking with phonics is kind to.
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Wow, that’s pretty bad if they can’t learn from their own mistakes. Do the faxes really have to be written out? Can’t someone create a template for people to type it in and then send it off? It sounds really cumbersome to outsource this kind of menial task; seriously… that’s what secretaries are for, no?
Hi, A lesson learnt.
I am going off to have a shot of espresso, or maybe low-caffaine one. Thanks for pointing out the correct spelling.