A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

6 cents a line!!! - oldie

Posted: Mar 28, 2013

Why don't we just transcribe for free and get a charity deduction!!! LOL It just keeps getting worse and worse. So depressing.

oldie - mumscritters

[ In Reply To ..]
I tell 'ya, I'm not a Pollyanna but I guess hope springs eternal. Holding on and hoping something is gonna give in this "profession". Unfortunately, I am starting to fully believe that the only thing that's gonna give is the bottom is going to fall completely out.

I used to do the "Hope Springs Eternal" thing, too. - (sm)- Meerkat

[ In Reply To ..]
When I (stupidly) left a good-paying on site job for a remote MT position at a national, it was because I believed I could make more money on production. That turned out not to be the case, but I still kept telling myself "That's okay, because at least I can work at home in peace and quiet, and have flexible hours."

The peace and quiet was shattered when my company was sold the following year to one of the big nationals. Then it was constant phone calls, e-mails, and teleconferences telling me (and everyone else) what a lousy job we were doing. (Funny - at that time we still had our old accounts, which the original company thought we were doing a bang-up job on, and told us so often.) So I guess just having a different owner suddenly makes us bad transcriptionists.

One by one, the familiar original accounts were yanked, and sent to India. The user-friendly software was yanked, and we were saddled with clunky, complicated and ponderously slow new transcription software. Pay suffered.

In addition to all the other little things the big nationals do that eat away at our paychecks, one day they called a conference and told us "Guess what?! We're cutting all the MTs' pay by 3 cents a line!" When asked why they were doing this, they gave no reason. They said, "We just are."

Other things kept happening that were destroying me financially, but I had started believing what they were telling me every day - that I wasn't working "smart enough" or "fast enough", and that "everyone else in the company" was making money hand over fist now that they were on VR. Uh huh. Yeah, right. Sure they are, even though it paid half what our formerly slashed per-line rates paid for straight transcription.

Yet I kept believing that it must be me. I must be lazy, I must be not as experienced as I thought I was (with 30 years' experience? Yeah, right!) So every morning I would get up and log on with renewed hope:

"Today I'll type like the wind!" (Not possible when the program keeps freezing up on you.)

"Today I'll be ultra-focused!" (Hard to do when you're freaking out every time another bill comes in the mail that you know you can't pay.)

"Today I'll make sure I have 100% accuracy!" (It would be nice, but it's hard to do when you're just a mere human. And even if you do get 100% accuracy, there's no guarantee QA isn't going to come in and either "correct" non-existent "mistakes" in your work, and claim you did NOT hit 100%.)

"Today I'll get my highest line count ever!" (Lots of variables, there... you can end up with scratchy-sounding reports, ESL docs up the whazoo, or... the dreaded "NJA".)

During the holidays last year, when I finally had to resort to the help of siblings to keep me afloat and still in my tiny apartment, I came to the realization that I wasted several years thinking this job was going to get better, and when it didn't I wasted 2 or 3 MORE years thinking I could find another MT job somewhere else. But I couldn't. The realization set in especially as the number of non-MTSO jobs listed on the online want-ads dwindled from about one new one a week in my state, to sometimes nothing for an entire month.

So I'm on my way out of MT permanently. I'm currently only in it for the health insurance, which I'm going to try to use as much of as I can this year, because I foresee either the insurance, or possibly even the entire job altogether, disappearing before the end of the year.

Whatever. I'm so beyond caring anymore. When an email screams "All hands on deck!" when they get behind on TAT, it doesn't interest me at all. Sorry, but if I'm not getting overtime for the extra work, then nuh-uh. I've got better things to do. I do only as many lines and hours as absolutely necessary to keep the insurance, and use the rest of my time far more wisely: Job-hunting, school, and freelance work when I can get it. And I look forward to the day when I can finally close the door on my former MT career forever.

=^..^=

To Meerkat - oldie

[ In Reply To ..]
I hear you. Can you send me an e-mail as to which MTSO you are working for? Just curious.

best post ever - schnauzermom

[ In Reply To ..]
I also felt like maybe it was me. Maybe they are right and I really do suck. Years and years experience notwithstanding. They made me doubt my skills and hate my profession.

I'm done with the MT game too - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
Same here also. I gave myself the same pep talks, hoped for better like you, set the same goals. Until I realized that the what I wanted from this job was out of my control.

Finding this message board was a true turning point for me. I saw others dealing with the same MT game, and losing through no fault of their own.

I am now in my second semester at a community college, preparing for a new job field far away from anything remotely related to MT. I have stopped caring about the unreal demands from the company, their Catch-22s, their games.

The MTSOs are like the casinos in Vegas--the house always wins.

I'm done begging for jobs, done with having no life outside of this computer, done with being made to feel like a terrible worker. Done with being treated like a peon.

got that 6 cent a line job offer too - schnauzermom

[ In Reply To ..]
I did not even bother replying. I was so insulted.

Ad removed from MT Jobs - oldie

[ In Reply To ..]
Either she found someone or realized how insulting that pay was! LOL.

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