do you want to borrow my - anon

ha ha ha ha ha - that made my day

sorry I - need my

Just wait until we get locked of the system! - NEMT

I don't see how that "locking" out program - Kiki

LOCKING OUT - Nature

NJA North/Q post - long (as always) Ha Ha - vikefan

I am a now former employee of the North area (I had never been fired in my life until yesterday, (we can barely afford for me not to work) and yet, I am not upset in the least that I was fired.  I'm actually giddy and giggling about it.  I truly think it's funny and I will be applying for unemployment but I don't think I'll be out of a job very long.  In another post, I am going to give you a link to a site that has a lot companies that only require a resume, some that require experience stats but so far, no tests. Then, if they're interested, you test and/or interview from there.  I have 5 or 6 tests/interviews scheduled already and I just started sending out resumes yesterday evening.  After my tests and interviews, I'll send out more.  

Q has stressed me out for so long I didn't know how bad it was until they told me I was let go and I was relieved (my husband even told me last night I had no idea how stressed I had been about that place for so long).  Say you're having a rough week, all crappy dictators and are lucky to make your 3900 lines and you've put in your 39 hours. Where's the time to read the 25 daily E-mails, read everything at DocQCenteral and keep up with your feedback and even with feedback, you have no recourse if they are wrong when they correct your report?  I did all the extras on my own time, almost all the time. Even if I had a good week, I didn't want to stop at 4000 lines just to do the other stuff. And you're supposed to do all of this in 39 hours, remember about 25 passwords for so many applications and take some of the courses on your own time without pay.  It's beyond belief.  Think about it.  

I think a lot of you are there or are getting burned out.  You've been with Q a long time so why switch now?  You know the job, you know the format, the software, etc., and if you're lucky, you've had the same accounts for more than 3 weeks but all too often (at least 5-7 times while I was there in 27 months, as soon as I started screaming through the accounts with so many lines I couldn't count, I got switched to different hospitals, and my lines dropped each time - I'd pick up again, excel and get switched, over and over). I know most of us think that there's nothing like the old familiar - you know - kinda like staying with the abusive husband because you aren't familiar with life without him, could you make it without him, etc.?  What would you do?  Familiarity is a comfort to you.  

A lot of you here know I am a recovering alcoholic of many years (10 years sober, but alcoholic brought me down quick and very hard.  I started drinking hard around age 28 and was a full-fleged dawn-to-dusk drinker by age 32) .  As active alcoholics, we are afraid of change.  As recovering alcoholics, we learn how good change can be.   It is the same way with life.  If you are unhappy, time to do something about it, lest we get stuck going down the same path over and over again, being unhappy the rest of our lives.  

Don't make excuses not to look elsewhere just because you're "used to the Q".  If you're truly happy there, stay.  I was happy, I mean I really liked that place for about 18 months (and especially my first supervisor who was let go one day - all I knew is she was there one day and I had a new one the next).   I defended the company to no end when people criticized it (naive or just stupid, I guess).  

When they let me go, they couldn't say this was the reason (legally it would be trouble).  I had gotten so sick I probably should have been hospitalized at least a couple of times.  My line count suffered time to time, which more than likely was due to my constant fever (nothing would bring it down), constant pain, constant infection, constant fever, weakness, white count over 20K etc. etc.  

I tried to call off a couple of times during all of this, but since it was during the summer months, I was told PTO was closed and that I just could not take time off on a whim (I hope the ones responsible for that statement get the same "whim" I had).  All I wanted was a day or two where I could just rest and try to get better (for almost 3 months, I had about 3 or so full nights of sleep because I was either up peeing every 20 minutes due to the severe UTI, in pain due to the kidney stones or other inflammation the septicemia left my body or whatever.  Constant pain makes for little sleep.  All the steroids they had me on for the inflammation made my hands shake so bad, it was hard to type.  I couldn't breathe without feeling like there was a knife in my back.  Yet I did not miss one day of work, or, if I had to go to the doctor or ER, I made up the time that day.   I am not a sickly person, just someone who ended up with 9 body systems affected (not counting broken foot/ankle and abscessed tooth) and was put on 14 medications to try and get me better, on top of my normal meds.   At one point, I didn't really want to die but honestly, I was just so sick, that didn't care if I did.  I was 42 years old.   

Again, my lines did suffer (I could barely sit up in my chair) and one time only, my work quality went to 97.5% so I got put on review for that.  And even then, I was still denied a little time off to try to heal.  

Anyway, I had even mentioned to my supe yesterday that I hope they clean up their act (after discussing all my missing documents, during which she remained silent) because I'd hate to have to contact the SEC so they're investigated again.  She was speechless (I wasn't nasty about it, only stating a fact).  It's a shame.  My supe was one of the good ones and if it's one thing I can say about myself is that I am a very observant person.  I can tell you without even ever having met her in person, that she is overworked (she never said that to me, I can just tell these things) and probably way underpaid for the job she does (they work all week and then if you need to call them on the weekends, you can page them by pressing * whatever???  Christ, I'd go insane.  Give me my 2 days off).  A year ago, she only had to cc maybe 15 people or so when she sent out E-mails. Now, her cc list is so long, it's a paragraph, probably about 7 lines of people she is now responsible for.  I feel for her and I'd bet the higher ups treat her like crap. She is a hard worker.  Too bad I don't think I can mention her name because she is one of the good ones, efficient, on top of things and very hard working.  

Anyway,  I only made the SEC comment because I've been the victim of so many missing reports (wrote an E-mail to my CTL about it and wrote something like "I check my stats against my job IDs and I can SEC, er, um, see that they just don't match" and almost always, reports are missing".  I can tell you that this went over like a ton of bricks.  :-)  

The missing reports went on for months and I thought maybe I was just nuts (after I mentioned the missing reports, that nonsense stopped).  I had no idea about the lawsuit when I was hired or even for awhile after that.  Once I looked into things, I realized, that I worked just as hard every day, and slowly but surely, those $800 plus paychecks twice a month were going down down down down down.  I was never trained or told to track reports, write job IDs, doc IDs, etc.   Make sure you are doing this, and make sure you check your stats.  They will rip you off in a heartbeat.  I had 2 dictations in a row one day, one 30 min, one 45 min.  Upon completion of each, I had exactly 1 line of credit for each document even though there was dictation all the way through both reports.  When I called my supe re this, she told me they showed on their end that someone else did the reports and I questioned then why was it showing I did both reports (albeit with only 1 line of credit) and they said I must not have done something right.  One other time (I worked Tue-Sat), I had over 900 lines on Tuesday and over 900 on Wed.  I didn't want to wait for my final report for that Wed and guess what?  There were no stats whatsoever for that Wednesday.  When I called, they told me I must have been thinking about Tuesday.  I asked them then what had I done all day on Wednesday?  Another 900 lines ripped off.

Make sure you are getting credit for your work.  These people are proven thieves who got away with murder.  ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS PAY BACK THE COMPANIES WHO SENT THEM THE MT, AND YOU WORKED FOR FREE FOR HOW LONG???????  

One other thing I was never told is that when you have NJA, you log out of DQS.  I never did.  I didn't know better.  Of course, you know what that did to my line count when it was slow.  

One last thing that drove me insane - in the 2+ years I was there, they eliminated, changed, rearranged, etc., positions so often I had a terrible time keeping track of things because job responsibilities and titles just kept changing.  I refused to keep a notebook of what position who was now and what their responsibilities were.  Why bother?  It was going to change soon anyway.  And I got reamed for asking a wrong person a question when that particular responsibility had been taken away from them just a couple days previously.  All I can do is shake my head.  

I want to thank those who are still with me and again, if you are happy at MQ, I encourage you to stay.  If you are not, think about exploring your options.  Like I said, life is short.  Remember what the Bible says: "None of us are promised another year, another month, another day. Each day is a gift from God."  It always says "For what is your life?  It is even a vapour that appeareth for a litttle time, and then vanisheth away".

I really truly hope things improve for those of you there.  I hope Q gets their act together.  Try to keep your chins up, and for those of you who are not happy, think about doing some soul searching.  

I want to bless all of you here, wish you all the best of luck in whatever you do and I will stay in touch from time to time.  Again, this post is NOT to encourage or discourage anyone to quit MQ, stay with them, take action against them, report them etc.  It only shares my experiences and I certainly hope yours are better.

Now, let's hope that warmer weather comes in soon so we can start opening our windows and feeling that beautiful breeze as we type.  I'll be posting that web site soon where you can forward your resumes.  Plus, I've got tests to take tonight.  

Again, God bless all of you and keep you safe.  We've had our differences at times but you are one great group of people.     Like I said, I will stay in touch but I will definitely miss you guys.  Good luck!