what's a cherry picker?

A cherry picker is someone who manipulates the dictation system to give her or himself the better, longer reports or the known good dictators. I am not sure how people do this with at-home and internet based transcription, but when I worked at a hospital people used to check what was coming up on the big Lanier machines and take a break if they saw something bad on the horizon. If you are in a position to assign yourself work, such as a system administrator, you could take the best dictators for yourself, but it is likely if you are new you are not in this position yet.

My advice:  Stay on the good side of your coworkers and do the work that is lined up for you.  

not all the managers of the closed MQ offices are working from home, my office manager lost her job and so did everyone else that worked in that office, (when you think about it how many managers do you really need it everything is done via email) we were told by our office that the hospital could track who was skipping reports but nothing was ever done about it, everyone was told not to do it which stopped it for awhile but then it would start up again, we also had managers that would assign certain work types to certain transcriptionists or certain drs to certain transcriptionists, that's how it was in my old office

I don't like cherry pickers for whatever reason, but I do know this.  If you hang in with the worst dictators on your account, transcribe them each time they come up, guess what - you get the hang of them and learn them, no matter how difficult they are.  That is what is ignorant about cherry picking to me, taking on the most difficult dictators just gives you an opportunity to learn and conquer no matter how slow going it is at the beginning.  I think if die-hard cherry pickers looked at it as an opportunity to learn, it would stop - I don't like anything or anybody to "whip me", so I do jobs at my company that have been kicked around all over the US for two or three hours, but the cherry picking stops here.

Well you see, you stated right in your post that you can't possibly cherry pick...so what do you know about what is going on with the rest of us out here who DO have to deal with cherry pickers. 

Don't know what you make per line but getting about 666 lines per hour is quite astounding.  I'm sure you must be quite happy where you are and with no cherry pickers!  Good for you.  I've been an acute care MT for over 30 years and am rated as one of the best as far as QA and quantity and have NEVER, EVER in my life been able to come close to your line count.  Maybe you are from another planet and have powers beyond us or maybe you have some special secret you could share.  Or maybe, we should just ignore your statement of getting that kind of line count, especially when you are not dealing with cherry pickers.  

I do know exactly what you are talking about.  And to you other posters who ask, "how do you know"....believe me with some accounts it is very, very obvious unless you live in lallah land!!  I've been going through this cherry picking routine now for about 5 months.  Company hired one new girl who tried for several months but couldn't do the "bad" guys so she was terminated.  Now we have a new "seasoned" MT who is skipping over the same dictators.  The really SAD news is that QA doesn't want her to even try to do those docs because they can't understand them either.  So they are left for me and one other person as we seem to be the only two who can do their work!! 

I've let the "powers that be" know that this really should not be tolerated; they agree but will give her a little more time to "adjust".  Wish I could "adjust" my bills!!!!!  Anyway, smile....things will get better.     

I work with a program that will not allow you to cherry pick. If you try to dump the job, it comes right back to you.

It's a good thing though. I have learned a lot of foreign accents and have put up with mumblers, pausers, stutterers and horrid background noises, but I can do it all.

When the companies the cherry pickers work for downsize or go to VR (voice recognition) the good MTs will be working and the cherry pickers will be saying, "Do you want fries with that?

I have been struggling all morning transcribing STAT reports that are OUT of turn-around.  Not to mention that these STAT reports are dictated by the worst ESL I've ever done.  Meanwhile, everytime I go in to grab a new dictation, I can't help but notice a certain CHERRY PICKER grabbing up every current report dictated by the best.

So if there are any cherry pickers out there bold enough to answer my question, could you please just tell me why???  What gives you the right?  Do you not even realize what you are doing to the rest of us?  Why not just join in and divide the misery for a while so we can all have a decent line count at the end of the day?  GRRR.

Thanks for letting me vent...

I really think you should spell out what is happening to your supervisor.  It's really easy to offer up the advice to let Karma take care of things and what goes around comes around and so forth and to keep your mouth shut, but the truth of the matter is, unless you speak up, it will continue.  It may continue even if you do speak up, but at least there is a chance that it will be stopped. You are being cheated out of a lot of money!

Last year I discovered that a teammate of mine had been assigning herself docs.  I was new on the account and just trusted that everyone was being honorable and taking first in/first out.  When I discovered the extent of her cheating and I did the math (multiple 5-page reports each and every week), I saw that in the less than 6 months since I had been on the account, she had cost me literally thousands of dollars, not to mention fatigue and burnout.  (That was assuming, of course, that if we were both working first in/first out we would naturally be splitting the standards and easier work.)  The only reason I discovered it was that when she went on vacation, I got these awesome reports that nearly typed themselves.  I hadn't had them before because she assigned them by author before anybody else could get them - sometimes over 24 hours ahead of what we were working on.  She has since quit, and I believe the reason is probably that she could no longer work on whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, making hundreds of dollars each week in only a couple of hours.  

Our supervisor was just simply a trusting person and never thought to check out the reason for her sky-high line counts.  It was NOT okay to do the work out of order, and she instantly made her stop.  I would guess that the same is true on your account, and, indeed, on most accounts, that the oldest work is to be done first.  I would encourage you to ask that you all be held to the same standard so that you can work as a true team. 

How do you all deal with cherry pickers on pool accounts where there are several MTs working on the same account?  What I mean is, some MTs take the best work, even when it's not the next work to be taken, leaving the worst dictators for the ethical MTs.  Any suggestions?  (Talking to the MTSO doesn't seem to help, even though they have rules against this.)