Thanks for your kind words. I will hang in there, and hope

• I dont understand why these companies keep SM - MichMT
  • Chronicle does the same thing. Keeps - JRMT
  • Yep. This MT feels like a ping pong ball... - MTx1000
    • ping-ponging - italia
      • Thanks for your kind words. I will hang in there, and hope - MTx1000
  • Any particular company you are talking about? n/m - Wondering
    • Just read through some of the post and you can pretty much see. Quite a few actually. nm - MichMT

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and suggestions.  It means a lot to me.  I'm a pretty optimistic person, so I believe something better will come along...but it feels good to share my frustrations with those of you who have been there, done that, and got the T-shirt!

I better go to work!  Have a great weekend everyone and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.

Just Me

What I was trying to do with my original post was spark some healthy dialog, and boy did I!   It’s clear that few are without an opinion on this one, from those who took my fanciful VR language as a true and scary representation of what VR produces each and every time (yike!) to the more Borg-minded crowd (Resistance is futile.  You will be assimilated.)   My point – and I actually do have one – is in the title of  Judge Judy Sheindlin’s book:  Don’t Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining.  I don’t necessarily see VR as an intentional move by our MTSOs to cheat us out of money, but I also don’t see them taking the 30-50% cut in profits they are expecting us to suffer. 

Somewhere between steeling ourselves for a career move that includes saying  *Do you want fries with that?* and allowing ourselves to get all borgified  by our employers’ switch to VR there must be a middle ground.  I just have not thought of it yet.   Anybody have an idea what that might be?  Instead of just bitching and catastrophizing about this, I would like some constructive suggestions for peaceful resistance, should employer tell me my account is switching next month. 

I've been in the profession a long time and I was actually surprised that I could not do the ESL and some of the other Docs at FN.  I've written twice about FN on this board, and I tried to give some of the positives, there were plenty of those too.  When I see how the MTs at some of the big nationals have to punch in and punch out, can't flex their time at the keyboard, have to use up PTO when there's no work available, get switched around without notice, I think FN is probably a whole other, superior culture to work in.  Experience is valued, consistency and regular production is appreciated, the line count as I have said in an earlier post is always correct, the checks are on time (so didn't really need direct deposit once I got used to waiting the few days it took to cut the checks.  My direct supervisor seemed to make assumptions about some situations without asking my version of who said what when, and that was a sore point with me.  They do assess a small monetary charge when certain mistakes are made, per employee handbook this is supposed to kick in after 90 days of employment, but I got my first official notice in my first month, while I was still learning the ropes. I did get quite a few calls about jobs that I never had in my queue being missing, when I never had them in the first place, resulting in having to do them and send them right away.  I kept daily written logs so I knew that I did not have these jobs in my queue. 

The quota is 1200 lines a day times 10 in the pay period to qualify for employee status and benefits, and there were quite a few days with no work available for the full 6-8 hours it would have taken to do the 1200 at my skill level,  and I never could get a straight answer about health insurance although it was a condition agreed upon when I was hired. 

I was sorry to leave, because although I really was unhappy with the quantity and quality of the dictation I hated to just give up.  Should say the sound quality was superb, it was just the actual Docs mumbling, snorting, whatever, that made doing the work so hard, and the general attitude seemed to be to just get used to it. 

My thought on the matter would be that I felt that it might have worked out and I might have stayed with FN because of the 90 percent great people, but only if it had been possible to work in-house for a while or at least to have instant message to some of the QA people so I could ask the questions BEFORE I had to send the report in, rather than getting a marked up report, or as more usual, just an e-mail with the missing words after the audio of the report was long gone.  I don't know about you but I am best at building my knowledge of any Doc's dictating style if I can research in my books, then on the net, then inquire of the QA in charge of my account, all BEFORE sending in a report, instead it went the other way around and I often had to send in what looked like it was not my best work, but in reality was my best effort. 

They DO load their LARGE program on your computer, and although I purchased a new XP computer with all the bells and whistles for the job, the platform had many wrinkles in it, seemed to cause problems with importing the demographics, and did lock up on 3 or 4 occasions, causing a 1/2 day loss of work. 

Well that's a long post all right, hope you'll forgive me if you've made it this far, but I decided I should put down all the bad AND the good in one post to see if it helps some people make up their mind.  I'm well aware that it may have been my problem all along and that I was just not suited to the particular matchup of company, platform, and accounts. 

Good luck to everyone searching, it is a frightening and tiring process.  Hope it works out great for you wherever you decide to work. 

Tookie Williams

It is hard to adjust to new rules, but you will catch on.  Reading over material/samples provided by the part-time employer is a great way to familiarize yourself with their ways of the trade.  Also, do not argue with QA.  Let it go.  If they let you go because of your QA score, then it was not meant to be.  There are plenty of others who would appreciate your intensity to learn.  Do not beat yourself up about it.  If you have a full-time job, then you know that you are worthy.  Keep trying, you are definitely playing it smart.  Never give up what you have until you find what you want. 

I'd like to address something that's really bothering me as I see it expressed so frequently -- It's what I call THE GRATITUDE TRICK.

First, I am not trying to find fault with what you wrote.  You sound like a fabulous mom and a very dedicated MT.  I really admire you for the sacrifices you've made to accomplish what you have -- and that goes for everyone out there in the MT world who has done the same.  I mean this sincerely.  I am amazed at what some of you have managed to do and how you continue the struggle now.  Hats off to you all!!! 

But I have to question why do MTs have to make such sacrifices in the first place???  It sounds to me like this has been the case for many years now.  If we are the professionals we claim to be, we deserve the same standard of living that any other professional gets to have who works out of their home.  The perks go across the board for everyone who works from home, no matter what profession--gas savings, wardrobe, etc.  We are no different.  This aspect of what our job is worth income-wise is only a small part of the equation.  The difference for us is that we are not fairly compensated for our work as other professionals are for theirs.  THAT is what sets us apart, not the perks.  

I think this is a way the services have used to keep us in submission for years, and it's dirty playing.  I do not feel grateful to my employer to be able to work from home.  My gratitude goes to God for the technology that allows me to do this.  Heck, I'm saving them money in overhead from working from home, buying and maintaining my own equipment and reference materials, paying my own Internet service fee, etc.  No, THEY are making money OFF OF US.  Yes, businesses do that.  They have to earn a profit.  But it is wrong for them to tell us pretty much to go away and be quiet and count our blessings because they are so kind as to let us work from home, thus making us feel that we should be ashamed for wanting to be paid more.  This is nothing but a mind game.  They are using this way of responding to us to shut us up and we're falling for it.  Next, it will be but at least we hired you and didn't send the work to India!  Little by little we are being demeaned by them as they reduce benefits, demand more in production, etc. all the while telling us how lucky we are to be able to work from home and we're falling for it. 

If our profession (and I keep using the word profession because that is what it is) goes down the drain because of technology, etc. then we can't control that.  But let's not help it along by buying into a mindset that says we're not valuable.   Anyone who has the knowledge and skills to do this job well should see their worth reflected in their paychecks, bottom line.  All the other stuff is just icing on the the cake.  

I think we as a body of professionals and as individuals need to have a much greater sense of self-respect, self-worth to begin with.  We are not the cast-offs of the working world!  If you can do this job well, you are no idiot.  And all of us know, this is anything but an easy job.   Many of you have invested most if not all of your working lives doing transcription.  Companies should be grateful to YOU for working for them.  A qualified MT only increases the company's image. 

Now how to become fairly compensated is a whole 'nother can of worms given what we are up against today.  But I think we need to start valuing ourselves more before we expect to be valued by those for whom we work.  This gratitude to our employer trick they use on us has got to be exposed for the dirty trick that it is and it needs to go!! 

I think a lot of our frustration with this profession comes from such mind games.  If you can keep your employees confused, if you can keep them from feeling they have no right to complain, you've got it made as an employer.  They're under your control.  But in the end it weakens employee morale which results in frequent employee turnover which results in loss of production while new people learn the accounts, etc. so it really backfires on them and is a stupid (to put it nicely) way to run a business.   You can run it right into the ground this way.

Even the benefits packages are somewhat of a joke if you can't afford the insurance.  I'm sure the companies have ways to write off those expenses to their own benefit.  That's another trick they use on us.  My dental insurance won't pay the rent.  Pay me a decent enough salary and I'll get my own dental insurance!

If we have any hope of turning our situation around, we need to be able to see the tactics that are being used against us.  Just trying to point out some red flags here as I see them. 

I'm do a different platform/client, but I also hired in this summer, and went through a rough time at first.  I talked to my supe, and after changing my schedule a bit and taking on two secondaries, things have become much better, and there's actually been OT on my accounts for the last few weeks.

Check the backlogs on the community page.  Some accounts regularly have OT approved (its in the little box at the top left, who's approved for OT and for how long).  Maybe you can get trained on some of those.  Are you willing to change your schedule at all?  My accounts consistently have certain heavier days than others, and before I was off during the heavy days.  My supe asked me to shift my schedule and it has made a very positive difference.