Goodbye Nuance. And oh yeah. You can SUCK IT. Sm - shipaddict

Posted: Oct 21, 2012

I am writing this email to inform you that tonight will be my last night with Nuance Transcription Services. Over my many years in the workforce, I must say this is the first resignation letter I have penned without any sense of melancholy fondness for the job I am leaving behind. No, instead, it is a feeling of liberation from "time served." For the past 7 months, I have put in my time here at Nuance, suffered through many countless hours of horrible voice recognition files, made next to nothing in the way of income, and saw my words of despondence, despair, and -- yes -- actual fright -- fall upon deaf ears. I did enjoy my job here at Nuance at first. I felt I was paid a fair wage for transcription and was happy to receive the benefits I did -- vacation pay, bonus pay, et cetera. For over a year I felt very secure and happy here. Until we were forced to switch to voice recognition. In truth, VR work is really not all that bad. However, the pay is abysmal. To this day I do not understand why a company thinks it is okay to pay their staff HALF the rate they were getting before for virtually the SAME work solely because of how the words got on the paper. Seriously. Did you think you were paying only our fingers? No. You were paying our BRAINS. You expect (as does the doctor, the patient, and everyone involved in the patient's medical care) every single word on that document to be correct. It is my brain that does that. Not your precious voice recognition engine software. Not my fingers. MY BRAIN and the brains of all the other well qualified Medical Transcriptionists you have on staff. It feels like slave labor or indentured servitude to work at such low wages. Not even in the slightest way does it feel like we are respected for our knowledge. This reduction in pay PENALIZES your best transcription producers. It only benefits those who are slow typists because it allows them to complete documents faster. However, for those of us who are fast (and accurate) typists, VR work is not more productive for us. It is actually slower for me. Funny thing is, this company that says they have to control costs as much as possible and couldn't possibly afford to pay their transcriptionists a decent livable wage, has a CEO that makes $20 million a year and lives in a mansion in Woodside, California. Really? You can't spare a dime for us? Really? No. Instead, we are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, sometimes not even making enough to pay the bills, and sometimes not even being able to afford other necessities like taking our children to the doctor or paying for their school fees. So I have decided that dealing with this job is beneath me. I would love to give my employer 100%, but I will NOT give 100% of myself to a company that does not give fairly in return. It has taken me a while to finally get past the feelings that it was just me. It's not just me. I'm good at what I do. You're bad at paying me for what I do. I have come to the decision that I will only give all of myself to a company that actually shows that they care for and respect their employees. I know without a doubt that this company feels very little for their employees. How do I know? After writing an email out of frustration and fear about my situation, the Human Resources manager ONLY responds to a single sentence in the entire email -- the one questioning why we don't get paid for administrative time, such as checking our emails and having Tech Support work on our computers. I was informed that this administrative time was "figured in" to our line rate -- which is a complete joke. If I am not producing reports, I am not making any money. Regardless of how you think you have padded this in to our line rate, if our time is taken away from the keyboard, we are LOSING money. My suggestions and complaints have fallen on deaf ears over the months. I have written numerous emails to my supervisors with suggestions for particular physicians. There are many physicians that are on VR that the computer will never be able to learn. Their reports are a nightmare. They are still a nightmare to type the report from scratch, but at least if we do have to type a raw document, we get full pay for it. I have informed my supervisors about these physicians, but I have never seen a single one of their reports changed to straight transcription. So we are forced to suffer with them at little to no pay. I have also requested simple information, such as whether or not there are hot-keys available for certain actions I wanted to be able to perform or disable in the transcription/VR platform, but I have never received a response on any of them. Oh, and how long did it take to change my last name? I think about 4-5 months. And then how long after that did Tech Support finally get their act together and contact me during the times I had carefully spelled out to them according to my availability to fix the software because it would no longer function after they changed my email address? For months my email and ComAgent didn't work. But nobody missed me because I worked third shift. So it is with an overwhelming sense of liberation and relief that I say goodbye to Nuance Transcription Services. I have no fear of burning my bridges here. There is absolutely no way I can imagine that I will need you for a reference, or an even more ridiculous thought, be coaxed back to the company. I am moving on to a job that has already given me a great sense of their respect for their employees. I wish the people I worked with directly here at Nuance (namely **, **) a prosperous and happy future. To the rest of Nuance, I leave you with the dregs of the product you have created, and a sincere hope that you someday pull your collective heads out of your butts and start treating your Medical Transcriptionists with respect -- and show them your respect for them in their PAYCHECK. Goodbye Nuance. You won't be missed.