I make more than that working for large National, which SM

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I use the company provided computer.  They had a change in computers and I was sent a new one.  Since that time, the foot pedal provided has not worked.  I can hear reports, but I cannot backup or move ahead using the pedal.  To hear something again, I have to bang my foot on the pedal. To move ahead forward or go backward for any length, I must go to playback page and manually move the cursor to where I need to be. 

I have put up with this for five years. Yes, that is right, FIVE YEARS!!!! I have called our so-called Help Desk numerous times and I have been sent two more pedals, neither of which work, or, rather, work the same as the original pedal.  I have asked for help from countless people.  The Help Desk states I am the only one having the problem.  The supervisor says I am the only one having the problem. I know one other person on my team who is also having having the problem, but we are too  ashamed to really raise heck.  I am disgusted. 

By the way, it is the most commonly used foot pedal. Even their ad states it works with any computer.  I just had to vent. 

Believe me, I'm not bragging or slamming anybody at all.  No way.  I'm frustrated with my own income because I'd like to make more.  I'm willing to put in more hours to do it, too.  Honestly, I'm not that fast.  I have one very small local account and one small MTSO I subcontract for.  None of it is verbatim, it's clean up the grammar as you go, which totally slows me down.

I won't work for a national any more because I couldn't make enough money there.  I wasn't willing to tough it out for three months until I could make their line counts, especially when they had me on their worst accounts, pools of hundreds of dictators per hospital so I couldn't use my expander, and a new account every week.

I've said before that if I'm going to do MT, it's going to be on my terms.  I won't chain myself to a desk or be "on call" all day long waiting for work to come in.  Nationals don't pay you to sit there and wait for work.  That's bull.  Being on call IS working.  Other businesses pay their "on call" people at least minimum wage.  They skirt around the issue trying to use SE and IC terminology, but it's just a way of paying us less to be at their beck and call.

Don't give up on MT entirely.  You'll find your fit.  It just takes some searching.

I agree.

don't have issues, but when I worked at SS their ESL dictators on at least 1 account were horrendous.  They were bad dictators on top of the sound quality being the worst I've encountered in my 20 years of MTing.  Management was a joke and you couldn't believe a word the CEO told you.   I worked in QA and the quality of the transcription was very bad.   Someone asked me if the work was done in India and I said it may very well be because it was so bad that it pretty much had to be done over.   I had some suggestions on how to better run things and was offered a management position to implement them, but I declined. 

The reason there is a lot of work is because they can't keep MTs.   I agree not all companies, not matter how good they are, are a good fit for all MTs, but if a company has constant turnover there has to be a reason for it.  I work because I need the money and I don't see any reason to waste my time going with a company that has the reputation that SS does.  There have been a handful of MTs who despite all the negatives about SS decided to accept positions.  A couple of MTs have come back about a month layer apologizing for not believing us and said everything we said was true.  

I would not refer my worst enemy to this company.