The recruiter IS the supervisor.

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initial contact with the recruiter, who I believe is not even an employee, but a third party, then I did the testing, which was again through a third party company, and then I had contact with the supervisor and went through a mini interview.   That was about 5 months ago so it might be different now. 

Well, I would think that if you can prove it you have a case. I know, this would make me crazy. I have felt the pinch of cherry pickers myself.

I wonder though, how is it that the supervisor doesn't know these people are taking an hour or two off or if their internet is down? Why are they emailing just you? If they are not notifying the supervisor, maybe next time you get an email like this you could email back and say something like thanks for letting me know, I'll be sure to let -insert supervisor's name- know right away that you are not able to work at this time, let us know when things are -insert excuse for not working- back up again/you are feeling better/etc.

I would most definitely let the supervisor know every single time someone was taking time off for the reasons you gave. Then, the supervisor knows and can handle it accordingly.

supe about this for a year or so -- just told within the last week (after my many questions to her about where the work has gone on this account) that the account had gone to ASR -- I heard a "jillion" excuses from the supe for the "no work" situation, EXCEPT THE TRUTH -- that it was going to ASR. Now only get the jobs that ASR cannot interpret. MQ supes are definitely not for the MT -- but MGMT puppets !! Don't you tell the MT's that their accounts are going to AST UNTIL AFTER equipment is working well, and we can handle it without the MT  !!!!!!!!!!

and I bet I know which accounts you are talking about, and I do them too.  They're still a mix.  Good with the bad.  I have a lot of experience with ESLs, so they don't bother me.  I also get my share of slurry progress notes.  It still evens out.

would get them right on it. So many new people in positions they do not know how to do and the MTs are on the ones suffering. Counting the hours and days until my time is up with them.

Are there ever any supervisory/recruiter positions

posted here?

Every situation is different for every individual.  I would suggest you talk to your supervisor. 

There's a certain natural tension between the need for reports to be complete and the need for MTs to be productive.  This means making a reasonable effort to resolve blanks and ambiguities, but no more.  There is an obligation to the client and patient, not only to deliver this report (the one that you're transcribing), but also those that are waiting in the queue behind it.

Dictation being what it is, some blanks are inevitable.  Sometimes you just need a second set of ears (the way we used to hand our earphones to the person next to us and ask what's this guy saying?).  As a supervisor I was much happier helping my people resolve blanks than being scared to leave them and making poor decisions.

That doesn't mean, however, that I didn't sometimes see blanks that undoubtedly should and could have been resolved by the MT.  For instance, I would see a blank early in a report due to a somewhat mumbled phrase that was dictated more clearly later and correctly transcribed, but the MT did not connect the dots with the earlier blank.  Or, I would see a blank for an unusual (but clearly pronounced) medication that I found in 5 seconds in the drug reference that we provided to MTs.  Or, I would see a blank for hypo-/hyper- such as hypoglycemia/hyperglycemia that was unclear, but the accompanying value made the choice obvious.  We hired only very experienced MTs for my accounts, and they should be able to resolve an ambiguity in a sentence such as The patient was extremely hyp?glycemic with a blood glucose of 26.

As I dealt with blanks turned in by my team, I sometimes had to address issues of inattention to context, lack of skills with reference materials or Web search methods, carelessness and yes, sometimes downright refusal to take even a brief amount of time to check a spelling.  I also sometimes had to deal with things like Expander errors, which occur due to inattention and/or the method that an MT uses to name her short forms (and in some cases, creating far too many short forms of questionable productive value).

However, I dealt with issues like these on an individual basis and only when I was satisfied in my mind that I wasn't misconstruing the situation.  In doing so, I found that most of these situations were opportunities to help an MT improve her skills or her understanding in some way and very few were cause for some sort of corrective action.  In other words, in my experience the vast majority of MTs take enormous pride in the work they do and the skills they bring to the dictation.  By contrast, a much smaller percentage of physicians exhibit that same level of care in their dictation, and to me that meant giving the MT the benefit of the doubt.

I was also keenly mindful of something else, which is that my connection to the dictation system might be better than what the MT had, so that what might be clear to me on reviewing the report could well have been less so when she transcribed it.  The phone system is such that we go through many different switches and circuits between here and there, and these connections can be quite different even between the same two locations on different phone calls.  You might call the system in Tampa from your home in Chicago, and one time your call could be routed through Atlanta while the next time it goes through Dallas.  Knowing this, again, the benefit of the doubt must go to the MT.

So, I looked for certain patterns of behaviors, not one-off incidents.  I produced for many, many years and have never forgotten the challenges of dealing with that tension between leaving no blanks and the corresponding responsibility not only to this job, but to the job behind it.  You can't lay down any rules about this.  You can only help your people have the best skills possible in doing rapid and effective research, in using the context of the report to help resolve ambiguities, and then you encourage them - yes, ENCOURAGE them - to leave a blank when they have made a reasonable effort rather than to believe that filling in anything is better than leaving a blank.  The supervisor should be the MT's resource of last resort - the backstop, so to speak.  It's the patient and that report that matter most, and getting it right is more important than who fills in the blank.