Some people (most people) who hate their jobs let their rage simmer quietly, bubbling eternally beneath a wanly smiling countenance. Small acts of disobedience are enough to keep it buried: Finish the office milk and don't replace it, steal all the Post-Its, leave a deceased squirrel in the desk drawer of your most hated superior! Throw the mail away! But one man, one brave Manhattan stenographer, he just had it one day, man, writing, instead of trial proceedings, "I hate my job." Over and over. And over.
According to the Post, Daniel Kochanski has compromised the outcome of around 30 Manhattan court cases with his...issues...writing gibberish where actual words to actual trials belonged. It wasn't all gibberish, though—sometimes he mixed it up with "I hate my job," which has all the elements of a proper sentence. Let's hear it for Daniel!
Kochanski, who at the time had a drinking problem, was fired in 2012, but the damage was already long done. His botched reports included the high profile 2010 fraud trial of Aaron Hand, leaving judges, lawyers and witnesses to attempt to reconstruct events that took place long ago.
“This situation is terrible for everybody,” Claudia Trupp, who works for the the Center for Appellate Litigation, told the tabloid. “It’s very difficult to come up with a sufficient record based on everybody’s recollection years after the event.”
“I never had a situation where a single court reporter was responsible for so much damage,” she said.
Kochanski asserts that he was fired not because he botched the transcripts, but because he was an alcoholic. He added that he's been clean for nearly a year.
