Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

LISTEN: Does This Health Department Worker Sound Like a Robot?

By James Fanelli | December 29, 2014 7:22am
 Ronald Dillon, a longtime city Health Department employee, was suspended for 20 days without pay after he repeatedly answered customer service calls in a robot voice, according to the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
Ronald Dillon, a longtime city Health Department employee, was suspended for 20 days without pay after he repeatedly answered customer service calls in a robot voice, according to the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
View Full Caption
Thinkstock

NEW YORK CITY — Is he just droning on or does he sound like a droid? 

DNAinfo New York recently obtained recordings of customer-service calls that got an IT help desk worker for the city's Health Department suspended for 20 days because his boss said he talked like a robot on purpose when he answered the phone.

In October a city administrative judge upheld the Health Department's punishment of computer specialist Ronald Dillon after listening to the recordings during a hearing. Judge Kara Miller called him a "disgruntled" employee trying to press the buttons of his supervisor by using the voice when he greeted customers on the phone.

During the hearing, Dillon claimed he wasn't channeling his inner Siri. Rather he said he was simply trying to appease his boss, who accused him of talking too fast and being brusque on the phone.

"They objected to the tone of my voice so I made it atonal," Dillon later told DNAinfo.

In the recordings, Dillon slowly says, "You have reached the help desk. This is Mr. Dillon. How may I help you?"

The judge determined that there was no doubt that Dillon intended to sound like a droid.

"There is a difference between speaking slowly and distinctly and speaking so robotically that callers did not believe that they were speaking to a person," she wrote in her decision.

Listen to the recordings and decide if Dillon is doing his best impression of an automated voice or just overly enunciating each word.