This IT pilot fish is part of a widely distributed work force, which means there are plenty of conference-call meetings — especially with one particularly problematic customer.

“The problem is usually that I either cannot hear or understand what’s being said,” says fish. “Not to say I pay a lot of attention during these meetings…”

But that does result in some standard procedures on the calls. “People will repeat my name and pause when asking me something,” fish says, “and sometimes someone will jump in to translate the English-with-an-accent to English-without-so-much-of-an-accent. My name will get repeated a number of times as well.

“Even better, now that I am allowed to use a government telephone-captioning service, I can capture the caption transcripts of the meetings. Between that and saving my email, I have some 18 years of documentation for my time working with this customer.”

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