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June 15, 2009 / Filed under: Google, Voicemail, Humor

When I praised Google Voicemail transcriptions, I didn't know how humorous they'd turn out to be.

For the record, the transcriptions are always very accurate - enough so I get the gist of the message. But it often misses words that end up looking very silly amongst the rest of the sentence.

I think the only way to illustrate my point is by providing some recent examples.

Here is a customer service woman at a nearby park district, informing me that the deadline has passed for returning teams for their recreation basketball league:

"hi matt this is rosemary from the martin grove park district i'm calling to inform you that deadline is pass to returning team stockholders spots in the summer basketball lease if your team is interested in participating in this year's late please contact seven eight eight four seven nine six five twelve hundred as soon as possible as spot survey labonte first come first serve basis thanks and have a good day"

• "martin grove park district" (Should be "morton")
• "deadline is pass to returning team stockholders spots" (stockholders?)
• "in the summer basketball lease" (lease?)
• "please contact seven eight eight four seven nine six five twelve hundred" (Let's write that phone number out: 78847965-1200. Kind of a long phone number, no?)
• "as spot survey labonte first come first serve basis" (OH, "spot survey labonte" - I love those.)

Here is a voicemail from my close friend Pat, informing me he will be at Buffalo Wild Wings shortly, and to see if he can get a table for the game. Perhaps I can show up.

"hey doctor it's me just calling let you know i'm going to buffalo wild wings with printers i'm on my way there and hopefully we can get some of the same let me know let me know if you guys get done maybe come by if not i'll talk to you later bye"

• "hey doctor it's me" (Kind of an odd thing to call someone if they're not a doctor, no?)
• "i'm going to buffalo wild wings with printers" (Hmm... just leave the office at home, will ya? Can't get away from your work at all. Sheesh.)
• "hopefully we can get some of the same" (Some of that "same stuff," eh? What... exactly is that same stuff, again?)

This is the pizza place calling me to tell me they had a problem with my order:

"hi this is john from search feed the calling we had the problem with making the pizza we had to get in touch with the pizza so if you could just give me a call back"

• "this is john from search feed" (Hmm, it's Google calling?)
• "we had to get in touch with the pizza" (Hey... if you need to get in touch with your inner pizza, you go right on and do that. No need to share with me.)

Good for a laugh, I think.