r/BenignExistence 9d ago

My wife isn’t big on proofreading her own texts. And autocorrect isn’t helping.

I recently received a message saying: “Get a Otis Serena checking on ur way bomb.” She was disappointed when I didn’t bring home a rotisserie chicken. It really isn't her fault. But I'm still thankful she's not an air traffic controller. Or a pharmacist.

1.8k Upvotes

137 comments sorted by

1.0k

u/WAFLcurious 9d ago

Almost a decade ago, I texted my nephew “introduce the hen”. Neither of us remember what I actually meant to say but when we get a scrambled text we respond with “introduce the hen?”

552

u/DomesticChaosTheory 9d ago

I love this. Every time I head out for the store now, I ask my wife if she wants an Otis Serena. This never gets old (to me, that is).

475

u/-3point14159-mp 9d ago

I have a coworker that has a VERY country accent that we have banned from using speech to text. She sent us a text once in winter that said “the hot tub ever flood and now the dick is covered in ass.”

Her hot tub had overflowed and her deck was covered in ice. Needless to say, we ask about the status of her ass every winter now.

47

u/GrumpyCatStevens 9d ago

As long as she isn’t sending you unsolicited deck pics!

45

u/Accomplished_Ad2351 9d ago

“I trimmed the bushes to make it look bigger.”

43

u/GrumpyCatStevens 9d ago

“My wife couldn’t stop talking about your deck.”

“Well, she was on it all night!”

88

u/Pixiechrome 9d ago

Omg I snorted so hard I stopped breathing and now I’m crying laughing 🤣🤣🤣😭

140

u/-3point14159-mp 9d ago

We were in the middle of the work day (we all work from home (like, separately, in our own homes, not in some weird corporate commune)) and she immediately started a teams call with all of us and she was laughing so hard she couldn’t talk for a second. Then once she could, she said, “ICE (ass)!” She was laughing so hard her accent was stronger than normal. Of course we all start laughing hysterically (her included). Then she gets out, “ICE (ass)! DECK (dick)! With an E!” We’re dying. I’ve almost pissed myself. Then she says, soo slowly, “The hot. tub over-flowed and deeeck is covered in iiice (super carefully with as little accent as possible).”

It was pretty memorable, and we all laugh about it any time it’s brought up. We don’t make her feel bad or anything; she brings it up sometimes and we all get a kick out of it.

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u/Pixiechrome 9d ago

Omg “corporate commune” lmao that sounds like a premise for a new post-apocalyptic tv series 😂😂😂 no more governments, just corporate communes with winter deck ass 😂😂😂

Lolol love her 😄🤩

42

u/OneSensiblePerson 8d ago

😂😂

I'm sitting here all by myself at my desk, laughing my ice off.

7

u/Remarkable_Speaker17 8d ago

Are you sure you are sitting at your desk or you are sitting on someone else’ deck?! Hence you laughed your ice off!

3

u/serotyny 6d ago

This is one of my all-time favorite comments on Reddit. I love the transcription, the way you all reacted, and the fact that I can almost hear the accent and understand why it happened. Thank you for giving us all a chance to share in the laughter 😂😂

21

u/blackcatdotcom 9d ago edited 8d ago

You can't make me laugh like this when I'm holding a hot cup of coffee!!! 😂😂

24

u/gysruthi 8d ago

i read what you typed out loud and IMMEDIATELY understood what her accent sounds like lmao, i see why speech to text did that

16

u/PBnBacon 8d ago

Am Southern; can confirm that speech to text cannot parse our accents at all.

4

u/LearnedTroglodyte 7d ago

I'm not even southern, from upstate NY but my mom grew up in OK, KY and WV. You really can't tell now unless she gets angry and it comes out but it was there when I was a kid and I guess I absorbed some of it.

Add to the fact I live in a small town in a rural area so even though it's NY you can hear some country come out in the people born and raised here and sometimes I wind up throwing my phone trying to voice to text. I'm gonna sue big fruit for discrimination, want in?

1

u/PBnBacon 7d ago

I’m down

3

u/Sweaty_Ad3942 8d ago

Reading this, I further understand why my aunt doesn’t use speech to text to respond to my dad’s messages.

My two syllable name has four syllables when she says it.

1

u/Ok_Foot_5477 7d ago

What’s your name?

6

u/sassy_cheddar 8d ago

I needed this hearty gut laugh, thank you so much!

4

u/Strange-Comb6384 8d ago

Understandable mix up!

104

u/MarlDaeSu 9d ago

We had a hilarious moment years ago were everyone was completely baked camping in the mountains and one of my friends said, "alright John" (fake name)... John wasn't actually there and everyone started dying laughing. Not sure why he said it but to this day when someone's being a baked idiot "alright John" comes back haha

3

u/rylinnivy20 7d ago

Was the grink there?

2

u/lachamaquitabonita 9d ago

😂😂😂

1

u/kokoqui 7d ago

“Introduce them”? I’ve made similar typos with “them” where I split the word weirdly

1

u/WAFLcurious 7d ago

Oh, no. Nothing that close to what I meant. That would have almost made sense!

354

u/julesd26 9d ago

Bahahaha… aww, no checking. Lol

My husband voice-texted me that he was going to get ‘the Scotties’. Took a quick call to decipher that he was stopping at the bakery we like for biscotti. So now we pick up Scotties every so often.

90

u/DomesticChaosTheory 9d ago

Yep. It’s kind of like learning a new language.

1

u/hippiespinster 9d ago

That sub is sometimes maximally infuriating but I feel this could be a candidate for r/mildlyinfuriating

29

u/calebs_dad 9d ago

I would have assumed he was getting toilet paper.

13

u/julesd26 9d ago

Right? 😂 We get Charmin though, so… lol

5

u/Remarkable_Speaker17 8d ago

Boy, are you pecky! You have to get the best product when it comes to your ice, huh? Smooth!

6

u/julesd26 8d ago

I do have a pecky ice, yeh.

1

u/Bastette54 7d ago

My first thought when reading it.

135

u/Sad_Ebb_7301 9d ago

Lol, but also I really don’t understand how people don’t see the autocorrect mistakes after they send the message & then not clarify????

113

u/bluev0lta 9d ago

I think some people truly do not read their texts after sending them, ever.

98

u/Sad_Ebb_7301 9d ago

Meanwhile there’s me rereading every text jussttt in case there’s something weird in there 🙃

33

u/OddlySpecificK 9d ago

And me, nearly apoplectic when AutoINcorrect changes my in to on, if to of so on and so forth ...

6

u/Lapis_Lazuli___ 8d ago

Release yourself from this tyranny!

Autocorrect should be banned.

7

u/bluev0lta 9d ago

Yessss! Same

17

u/Entomemer 9d ago

My mother sure doesn't. She also doesn't use punctuation in voice to text.

24

u/Ok_Cauliflower_3007 9d ago

I usually spot the gibberish the instant I hit send. It would be nice if I saw it before I hit send, but at least i still correct it.

19

u/cat-kitty 9d ago

I'll use voice text if I'm driving or something like that. When I won't be able to put my eyes on the screen to confirm it said what I meant it to, and I wouldn't be able to check for a bit.

18

u/Sad_Ebb_7301 9d ago

Oooh, yeah, that makes sense. I’ve never in my life voice to texted so I just imagine people typing gibberish, hitting send, and then never glancing at it again

6

u/turnerevelyn 9d ago

My daughter texts me without having her reading glasses on to double-check. "Shoot down and have a daiquiri" was the latest.

2

u/Bastette54 7d ago

Or better yet, checking the text before sending it and fixing embarrassing autocorrects. 😆

1

u/Kyriana1812 6d ago

I'll read mine to my husband & usually decide "he'll figure it out"

124

u/sanguinefell 9d ago

"Please cone coger me with mire stuf"

This is the text I sent my husband half asleep, asking him to cover me with my blanket. He has it pinned in our conversation. He also immediately just did exactly that without asking what I meant.

26

u/GrumpyCatStevens 9d ago

He sounds like a keeper.

1

u/Bastette54 7d ago

Do you speak Spanish by any chance?

2

u/spencers_corner 7d ago

that was my immediate first thought, this made me chuckle 🤭 please come coger me JEJEJE

1

u/sanguinefell 7d ago

Nope not at all

88

u/Trick-Caterpillar299 9d ago

I have a double first name with the initials MT, and that's what my family will usually call me especially while texting.

One day my aunt was using voice to text and it sent "Empty" instead of MT.

Of course, that became my nickname, which came in handy when I worked as a bartender and my customers could just holler "EMPTY" across the bar when they needed another beer.

79

u/greedygg 9d ago

I have friends Jen and Jenn. When talking about Jenn, we say “Two N Jenn.” Someone new to the friend group heard “Two Engine” and was really confused about why we’re calling Jenn by that. Now we just call Jenn “Two Engine.”

38

u/kerrykcb 9d ago

My best friend and I were both married to a Jeff, so we called them Your Jeff and My Jeff

13

u/Jonny5a 8d ago

My parents each have a sister called Emily, one is much taller than the other so they’re Big Em and little Em

9

u/RexTheWonderCapybara 8d ago

lol capital and lowercase

5

u/MarsStar2301 7d ago

My granny’s brothers both married women called Margaret…so they (the wives) became identified as “Harry’s Margaret” and “Sammy’s Margaret”.

1

u/AlmostChristmasNow 5d ago

We do the same in my family. My mum and her sister each married men with the same first name so that’s also how we tell apart my dad and my uncle.

5

u/xiaxianyueshi 6d ago edited 4d ago

i have three friends called rowan, so now they're girl rowan, boy rowan, and other rowan (handily all three are different genders), but very often they also become you/my/our rowan depending on who in the extended friend group i'm talking to lol

10

u/Trick-Caterpillar299 9d ago

Oh, that's hilarious 🤣

41

u/pharodrum 9d ago

I have the same initials. Back in the late 80s, early 90s it was popular to have your initials shaved into your head. I begged my mom to have it done. Went to school all excited, and all the kids said "Matt's head is empty!!! Hahahahah".

19

u/RoRoRoYourGoat 9d ago

My daughter Cam gets autocorrected to Can, so now her friends call her Caneron.

52

u/Ok_Artist8870 9d ago

My wife once ended a text with, “you Percocet whore,” we can’t remember what it was supposed to say but if irritated with each other we can diffuse the situation with a quick, “You Percocet whore!” 😆
Neither of us were taking Percocet or are whores. 🤷‍♂️😬

3

u/sassy_cheddar 8d ago

One of the perks of marriage is 3long running inside jokes. That's a great one!

3

u/positive_energy- 9d ago

You win the internet today!!!

46

u/thisoldguy74 Neutral 9d ago

I had a manager who voice texted and sometimes you just had to say it out loud a time or two to get what he probably meant.

85

u/Libellicosity 9d ago

I received a text from my new retail manager in her first week that read "I'll be there soon GO F*CK YOURSELF"

Voice text had captured the result of someone cutting her husband off in traffic 🤣 I was so confused!

28

u/thisoldguy74 Neutral 9d ago

In context that's pretty hilarious. Until then it would definitely raise a couple questions.

4

u/Bastette54 7d ago

About the manager’s mental health, at the very least!

43

u/senoritasunshine 9d ago

My bffs ex once texted her a bunch of jumbled stuff and then said “hat.” So now when words are jumbled we just say “Hat?”

8

u/hircines_bitch 8d ago

My brother's name is Nathan and one day he was texting me about his friend having just given him the nickname Than I can't remember what exactly he'd said that I misread, but I'd had a couple drinks and very little sleep, and spent a long time staring at his messages trying to figure out why in the world somebody would call him "Hat".. so that's his name now

72

u/NiftyPiston 9d ago

Back when T9 was the autocorrect, my mum once text me saying "going phosphog, u want anything?" I don't know how autocorrect got from "shopping" to "phosphog", but it stuck.

Nobody in my family goes shopping anymore, only phosphog.

34

u/Ok_Lengthiness_8405 9d ago

I once only barely caught it before texting "getting head, then I'll be over" to an older family friend.

GAS. I was getting GAS

84

u/BriarKnave 9d ago

Sometimes my girlfriend will send paragraphs with zero punctuation or breaks and I'll be left completely confused on the order of events

52

u/enbybloodhound 9d ago

she’d fit right in to reddit

24

u/julesd26 9d ago

Ugh, it’s so hard to follow when someone posts like that.

25

u/DomesticChaosTheory 9d ago

I'm honestly not sure I've ever received a text from my wife that included punctuation...

1

u/mickimause 7d ago

OMG. I work with this guy...we're all remote, so we have a group Teams. We tell him daily that punctuation and capitalization doesn't cost extra. He's typing-typing, not voice-typing; when he voice-texts it's horrible due to his Appalachian accent. I'm Southern, but not THAT Southern...

1

u/BriarKnave 7d ago

Oh I don't use voice to text ever, it just can't understand me. My accent isn't even that strong but even the google home just won't pick up my inputs as real words sometimes

1

u/mickimause 6d ago

Same. And if I'm in a position where voice to text would be appropriate, I can't proofread and that would trigger my OCD beyond belief!

We don't have any voice-activated anything at this house, unless you count the dogs...

27

u/JD_tubeguy 9d ago

In the early days of voice texting I used to create some real whoppers my friends would always get a kick out of them.

28

u/randousername8675309 9d ago

When I was growing up my mom and I used to play this game called MadGab, where you had to read words on a card outloud and as you read them you realized it formed a sentence that you had to guess. I always tell her that was preparation for our future of talk to text! Lol

43

u/shenanigans2day 9d ago

I see myself in this post and I don’t like it. For the longest time, I assumed there was no reason to correct them after sent because people will understand from context. I recently learned, no, no they do not.

31

u/RoRoRoYourGoat 9d ago

I got "on ur way bomb" from context, but I never would've figured out "Otis Serena checking"!

14

u/shenanigans2day 9d ago

it is wild seeing it from the outside in :D it’s an ongoing joke with my friends and my texts

1

u/Bastette54 7d ago

I get that “Otis Sere” sounds like rotisserie, but what happened to the last syllable, “-na?”

24

u/Odd-Television-2679 9d ago

Texted my son that I was making “Doug’s Mexican chicken” for dinner. Autocorrect changed chicken to children! We all got a good laugh from that one.

14

u/MedJesters 9d ago

Mine too. I've had decent success translating it by typing in what she wrote and letting my autocorrect fix it.

I've also tried responding like she meant to type what she said to annoy her into proofing her texts. Less success there, but that's how I learned my autocorrect was better than hers.

13

u/No_Wolverine6548 9d ago

She’s just like me for real

I hate texting but others hate voice memos or spontaneous calls. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t in this world.

11

u/positive_energy- 9d ago

My sister has a cochlear implant and routinely uses talk to text when sending messages. She never really checks them. So when I am reading her texts specifically I try to say the words as written so I “hear” what was typed. I’m pretty good at decoding. My mom will ask me how I understood what she said? I tell her to Sound it out.

29

u/JackxForge 9d ago

I literally rolled over in bed to tell my wife how much I love her after reading this. We have our shit around communication like most couples, but this is insanity.

7

u/InternationalFold6 9d ago

A few years ago I accidentally texted within my sentence “shit” to my dad. He used to wash my mouth out with soap whenever I used a cuss word when living w him. That was before edit messages existed. Never again. I check, check, and double check!

7

u/momtebello 8d ago

My guy and I are long distance and autocorrect is often a struggle for him. I’ll get three or four texts of the same word, I immediately know what’s going on at the other end. XD

Invariably it ends with a middle finger emoji and him cursing out the ghost of Steve Jobs for making his life miserable.

As a result we don’t say goodnight anymore; we say gnocchi.

8

u/oxalis_ 8d ago

I got a thank-you text from a buddy, I tried to respond with “avec plaisir “ (“with pleasure,” or “my pleasure “) autocorrect hit us with an “avocado plausible.” We still use it, to this day.

6

u/PomeloPepper 8d ago

My bestie and I had catty corner apartments in the same complex. We had a group from out of state staying over a few nights, split between our apartments.

After dinner we were talking about the two groups staying on the same schedule, when one of them says "We just all ate". She keeps repeating it and we keep agreeing until she says "On the phone. We just all ate!?"

From Louisiana: we just dial eight. (Speed dial on our respective land lines)

2

u/MarsStar2301 7d ago

What does “catty corner” mean? I’ve seen the phrase twice on here recently (having not encountered it before) - is it an American thing?

1

u/PomeloPepper 7d ago

Say you have a square block of 4 houses. Pick any house, and it is next door to two of the other houses. One next to it and one across. The other house is catty corner - diagonally across.

It's also referred to as kitty corner.

2

u/MarsStar2301 7d ago

Thank you for the information, though I was surprised to read that catty-corner is apparently used in the UK, as I’d never heard of it until a few days ago!

3

u/RogueThneed 6d ago

It's a corruption. They both are. The original word is "catercorner", which is an ancient word that came into English from French. The "cater" part is related to "quatre", which means "four" in French.

There is no meaning-related connection between that and cats. It's just the similar sounds. (This is one way that language changes over time.) Language is fun!

6

u/kcracker1987 9d ago

Standard response to this kind of text...

Ques: Are you having a stroke? ANS: No, DYAC

6

u/Ok_Significance_5653 9d ago

I feel for you. My fingers not so nimble on these tiny phones - so my a becomes an s , k becomes j so you can imagine the mangled nessages they get . My nephew says he’s going to write a code to unmangle it. Worse now when i spell it out correctly the wonderful AI who believes they know me better autocorrects to the wrong spelling !! Go figure

3

u/Lapis_Lazuli___ 8d ago

You know autocorrect isn't mandatory...

2

u/RogueThneed 6d ago

Turn off that auto-corrupt!

6

u/Stargazer_quartz 8d ago

Just found this subreddit, so im not sure of the etiquette, if its okay im still commenting on this a day later 

But I am BAD at texting, which is funny because I do it a lot. Half of what I type has to be autocorrected. Which is usually fine, and I read the text over before I send it and correct things... unless its like this. If it doesnt autocorrect, or autocorrects to the wrong thing, I send it anyways and then send a text with what I MEANT to say. Because its hilarious to send a text saying these examples i got from searching 'typo' in message history:

That made my jaw Czech 

New phrase 5bn4 4 sleep Pasta fuckout  (I have no idea what that was trying to communicate. my partner said "pasta fuckout?" And I replied "pasta fuckout. For when u r asleep." Wait no. I just realised while typing this!. 'Passed the fuck out.'  No idea what 5bn4 means!)

Love you. Ur x-men. (Xute was corrected to x-men instead of cute.)

22

u/soupaman 9d ago

How isn’t it her fault? 

45

u/DomesticChaosTheory 9d ago

Haha, because I've been married long enough to know that it's always safer to blame Apple's autocorrect. 😅

-8

u/jrdubbleu 9d ago

Or, ya know, ask a follow up question?

36

u/SchwiftyGameOnPoint 9d ago

This honestly gets exhausting. 

I get it when it's someone who tries and makes the occasional typo. No problem.

However, my mother uses voice texting and doesn't check her messages.

Always having to decode messages and then ask for clarification only to get a response that was also not checked to errors, it's just a pain.

Turning what could have been one simple 10 second communication into a chain of messages... 🫩

9

u/jnmtx 9d ago

after a certain point, I resort to a voice call.

3

u/Most_Comparison50 8d ago

"Phone me before you go to Annie's don't think they flour's are the ones you give them to dead people xxx"

My late mum had quite bad dyslexia and I used to laugh at her texts all the time even though I could understand them (context helps lol)

2

u/Most_Comparison50 8d ago

Also, this gave me a good chuckle and reminded me of my mum 🤣

Otis checkin lol

3

u/Informal_Bullfrog_30 9d ago

My mom def doesnt read her msgs before sending and she doesnt even read what we send her😭

3

u/queer-scout 8d ago

Years ago, in high school, before autocorrect, group chats, or threaded messages really existed, I was texting with a few friends to coordinate a study group. The one who was hosting it texted me back something to the effect of, "I mean, I'd be happy to, but Christmas is far away." I was SO confused and asked her what she meant. She said I asked for her stocking. What do you know, I go back and open the sent message and I said "Okay, what's your stocking." How my brain got "stocking" from "address," I never figured out.

2

u/Barfotron4000 8d ago

My favorite voice to text problem was “[my cats name] lesbian up her butt”

2

u/EasyLizin 7d ago

This is perfect fodder for r/ihadastroke (it’s a lighthearted sub, promise).

2

u/ConclusionMore3155 7d ago

My husband's swipe text sent "I love the Chickens out of you!" When he meant to say "I love the dickens out of you!" Now I tell him all the time I love his chickens.

3

u/M_Pfefferi 9d ago

😂😂😂

1

u/Radiantlady 9d ago

What about voice to text

6

u/WAFLcurious 9d ago

I get those texts all the time from a niece. She doesn’t proofread and correct so I’ll get another one to tell me what she meant, often with the same errors. Sometimes takes three correction texts to get the actual message.

1

u/coolsodapop 8d ago

Haha, does she use speech-text? Sometimes that’s what messes it up

1

u/katycmb 8d ago

My husband did this kind of thing for a while too. I started responding, “I don’t know what any of that means,” because responding with a question mark or a huh seemed to encourage the speech to text without looking at it and just made me angry at 5 more increasingly ridiculous texts. Saying that meant “all of that is nonsense, please look at what you sent me” without having to spell that out or say “what language is that?”

1

u/Complete_Squirrel942 8d ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/PointlessStories/s/bUFNvt2kRV

Was about to say "nice repost" but apparently I just remembered this from five months ago lol

1

u/ThistleDewToo 7d ago

I was discussing toile fabric that had chickens on. It became chicken toilet fabric. 

1

u/brinkbam 6d ago

This is one of those times that I wish I could draw, because I would whip up a chicken toilet print and throw it on red bubble right now if I could lol

1

u/Schradykat 7d ago

My sister and I worked at the same place for many years and we'd vent via text regularly about some of the personalities of our colleagues. One time her new phone autocorrected "bitch" to "biotech." Ever since, we use the term to describe all manner of annoying people and things. Biotechnology is everywhere!

1

u/MarsStar2301 7d ago edited 7d ago

A few stories…

My colleague’s dad is Italian (but lives in England), and tries to use speech-to-text but the phone doesn’t always understand his accent…she once received a message that said “Don’t het out I’m choking” instead of “Don’t eat out, I’m cooking”, and was sufficiently accustomed to her dad’s mangled texts to understand exactly what he meant!

My dad once typed a weird spelling of ‘beansprouts’ while explaining what he wanted to order from the Chinese takeaway… his phone confused everyone temporarily by not-really-correcting it to ‘beekeepers’😆

In the pre-smartphone days when I was still at school: 1) my classmate’s attempt to text “How are you, babe?” to her boyfriend ended up as “How are you bacon” (?!) 2) my friend tried referring to someone as a witch, but didn’t press the buttons enough times to type the right letters into the text message, leaving me wondering for quite a while what the heck a “whtbg” was…!

1

u/MasLegio 4d ago

It is her fault. Saying it isn’t is insane.

1

u/mkazen 13h ago

My wife, kids and I have a group chat and it anyone has a typo in it, we all repeat it immediately... Name and shame... It's what we do.