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I probably overreact to this, but here goes: My relay company requires the use of the "go ahead" (GA) signal being typed or spoken to indicate the end of one's message; this is important because the messages are relayed as close to real-time as possible and so an operator may, for example, have to stop reading while waiting for the deaf user to type the rest of their message.
It's really quite simple. You give your message, you say "Go ahead" or hit the " GA " button, then you wait for the other party to do the same. Rinse and repeat. People still find ways to mess up, despite the standard explanation covering all the bases I just summed up.
- Not giving the GA at all
- Giving the GA before the end of the message
- Interrupting the other party before they give the GA
- Unimpaired users (who basically say what they want me to type) ending the message with something else.
The last point splits into different degrees of annoyance. The least annoying being the users who say the names of the letters ("Gee Eh"); this isn't too bad, since deaf users actually send " GA " to end a message, but it's still not what a speaking user should be doing.
Then there's people who use "Over" which, while perfectly clear, is not mentioned anywhere in the TTY instruction booklet or the explanatory speech. Not too annoying, I'll still relay it as " GA ".
The most annoying message-ending is only used by one ancient woman, talking to her slightly more ancient deaf sister (who became deaf with age and therefore can speak quite clearly). For some unknown reason (well, I do have a far-fetched explanation in mind), she says "That's a go". She does it despite my prompts, every time she forgets, of "Please say 'Go ahead' if this is the end of your message", and despite her sister telling her "Go ahead" at the end of every message.
The explanation I have in mind is that maybe, at some point, an operator asked "Was that a 'Go ahead' ?" and that it confused her into saying what she does. But I would think that hearing her sister say it right every time and the fact that "That's a go" doesn't make sense would be stronger.
As I implied at the beginning of this post, this makes me angry because when I relay, I get in a "zone" so to speak, where I'm working on autopilot because too much thinking slows down my typing; users ending a message with non-standard terms take me right out of it. So, to get back at this lady for making my job harder, I've started relaying her "that's a go" exactly as she says it, hoping that her sister might at some point ask her what's up with that. No luck so far. Next step would be to stop relaying and point-blank tell her to stop saying "that's a go" and start saying "go ahead" but something tells my my boss wouldn't like that.
It's really quite simple. You give your message, you say "Go ahead" or hit the " GA " button, then you wait for the other party to do the same. Rinse and repeat. People still find ways to mess up, despite the standard explanation covering all the bases I just summed up.
- Not giving the GA at all
- Giving the GA before the end of the message
- Interrupting the other party before they give the GA
- Unimpaired users (who basically say what they want me to type) ending the message with something else.
The last point splits into different degrees of annoyance. The least annoying being the users who say the names of the letters ("Gee Eh"); this isn't too bad, since deaf users actually send " GA " to end a message, but it's still not what a speaking user should be doing.
Then there's people who use "Over" which, while perfectly clear, is not mentioned anywhere in the TTY instruction booklet or the explanatory speech. Not too annoying, I'll still relay it as " GA ".
The most annoying message-ending is only used by one ancient woman, talking to her slightly more ancient deaf sister (who became deaf with age and therefore can speak quite clearly). For some unknown reason (well, I do have a far-fetched explanation in mind), she says "That's a go". She does it despite my prompts, every time she forgets, of "Please say 'Go ahead' if this is the end of your message", and despite her sister telling her "Go ahead" at the end of every message.
The explanation I have in mind is that maybe, at some point, an operator asked "Was that a 'Go ahead' ?" and that it confused her into saying what she does. But I would think that hearing her sister say it right every time and the fact that "That's a go" doesn't make sense would be stronger.
As I implied at the beginning of this post, this makes me angry because when I relay, I get in a "zone" so to speak, where I'm working on autopilot because too much thinking slows down my typing; users ending a message with non-standard terms take me right out of it. So, to get back at this lady for making my job harder, I've started relaying her "that's a go" exactly as she says it, hoping that her sister might at some point ask her what's up with that. No luck so far. Next step would be to stop relaying and point-blank tell her to stop saying "that's a go" and start saying "go ahead" but something tells my my boss wouldn't like that.
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