The MT life for me
Sep. 18th, 2007 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grrgoylI'm dealing with new frustration in my life, that actually isn't all that new. This is about my MT work and I promise that it will be of interest to no one, but I do like to document such things for potential court hearings.
Some might remember the problems I had awhile back with my MT Supervisor Yerica (here's a helpful reminder). Yerica just couldn't be bothered with answering my constant, nagging questions about my raise status, account formatting, new company policies, etc. even though it was, you know, HER JOB. I remember the relief I felt when I heard I'd be reporting to someone new, Felicia. I remember how well Felicia and I got on at first. Not you-must-come-to-Thanksgiving-dinner well, but she didn't answer my emails with palpable resentment.
Then somewhere my relationship with Felicia soured. She started going weeks without responding to my emails, and often not at all. Most people probably have figured out by now that few things get my Irish up faster than being ignored, especially when I'm only trying to improve my work performance for the benefit of all involved. I also do my best not to bother people I perceive to be busy with trivial issues, so if I'm sending you a question, it's something that I feel probably needs attention soon (again, in the context of work. None of this applies to casual emails).
So Felicia's sudden ignoring of my emails recently didn't REALLY bother me until I received her order to sign up for ASR training (before she disappeared back into exile). ASR stands for Automated Speech Recognition, three words that strike terror into the heart of medical transcriptionists. MTs are probably more afraid of losing their jobs to this software than they are to off-shore companies. I've never given it much thought, but faced with requiring to learn it I took an optimistic view in that apparently my employer wants to switch over to it, but wants to incorporate it into my job, so I won't be laid off due to it. I also thought it might boost my productivity through the roof (some days my fingers just refuse to work properly on the keyboard) so this might even be an improvement in my work conditions. I've done some Googling though, particularly one website that seems to be full of thousands of disgruntled MedQuist employees, who complain that the company wants to pay half as much for ASR reports even though fixing the software's typos takes just as long as typing the report. Not good, but either way it's not up to me and if I'm required to be trained on this, I'd better get trained.
Easier said than done. I emailed Felicia numerous times over the course of several weeks, finally finishing with a "Why do you hate me?" message. Echoes of Yerica abounded. I broke down and turned to voicemail, truly a last resort because I HATE talking to people. That, too, was ignored, but just as I was about to go over her head (something else I hate doing), I received an email from Shannon announcing that she would be my new Supervisor. Was Felicia laid off due to communication incompetence, or was her incompetence due to being laid off? Either way, was it fair that she was dragging all her little MT charges down with her? And what became of my latest promised raise almost 2 months ago, another casualty of Felicia's crash-and-burn?
I emailed Shannon immediately, explaining my attempts to sign up for training (the "deadline" was at this point 2 weeks behind us). She promised to do so and that I should receive a confirmation from the ASR Coordinator (I snidely hinted at Felicia's poor performance but she refused to take the bait). That was now a week ago and still no confirmation, so again I'm getting nervous.
I tried going directly to the Coordinator, no more middle man, first leaving a voicemail with Shannon's boss (Shannon is out of the office for a week) trying to locate her and then finally getting connected to the Coordinator's voicemail, which is where I sit today. It's like I'm working for a ghost company that has all these names and voicemails set up that all look very impressive, but in reality there's one person running around doing everything, trying to maintain the appearance of a large business.
I'm frustrated. Frustrated and more than a little fed up with this shit, maybe fed up enough to think about leaving. Which is saying a lot, I'm not one to jump from job to job willy-nilly. It takes A LOT of dissatisfaction to make me move. We'll see.
Some might remember the problems I had awhile back with my MT Supervisor Yerica (here's a helpful reminder). Yerica just couldn't be bothered with answering my constant, nagging questions about my raise status, account formatting, new company policies, etc. even though it was, you know, HER JOB. I remember the relief I felt when I heard I'd be reporting to someone new, Felicia. I remember how well Felicia and I got on at first. Not you-must-come-to-Thanksgiving-dinner well, but she didn't answer my emails with palpable resentment.
Then somewhere my relationship with Felicia soured. She started going weeks without responding to my emails, and often not at all. Most people probably have figured out by now that few things get my Irish up faster than being ignored, especially when I'm only trying to improve my work performance for the benefit of all involved. I also do my best not to bother people I perceive to be busy with trivial issues, so if I'm sending you a question, it's something that I feel probably needs attention soon (again, in the context of work. None of this applies to casual emails).
So Felicia's sudden ignoring of my emails recently didn't REALLY bother me until I received her order to sign up for ASR training (before she disappeared back into exile). ASR stands for Automated Speech Recognition, three words that strike terror into the heart of medical transcriptionists. MTs are probably more afraid of losing their jobs to this software than they are to off-shore companies. I've never given it much thought, but faced with requiring to learn it I took an optimistic view in that apparently my employer wants to switch over to it, but wants to incorporate it into my job, so I won't be laid off due to it. I also thought it might boost my productivity through the roof (some days my fingers just refuse to work properly on the keyboard) so this might even be an improvement in my work conditions. I've done some Googling though, particularly one website that seems to be full of thousands of disgruntled MedQuist employees, who complain that the company wants to pay half as much for ASR reports even though fixing the software's typos takes just as long as typing the report. Not good, but either way it's not up to me and if I'm required to be trained on this, I'd better get trained.
Easier said than done. I emailed Felicia numerous times over the course of several weeks, finally finishing with a "Why do you hate me?" message. Echoes of Yerica abounded. I broke down and turned to voicemail, truly a last resort because I HATE talking to people. That, too, was ignored, but just as I was about to go over her head (something else I hate doing), I received an email from Shannon announcing that she would be my new Supervisor. Was Felicia laid off due to communication incompetence, or was her incompetence due to being laid off? Either way, was it fair that she was dragging all her little MT charges down with her? And what became of my latest promised raise almost 2 months ago, another casualty of Felicia's crash-and-burn?
I emailed Shannon immediately, explaining my attempts to sign up for training (the "deadline" was at this point 2 weeks behind us). She promised to do so and that I should receive a confirmation from the ASR Coordinator (I snidely hinted at Felicia's poor performance but she refused to take the bait). That was now a week ago and still no confirmation, so again I'm getting nervous.
I tried going directly to the Coordinator, no more middle man, first leaving a voicemail with Shannon's boss (Shannon is out of the office for a week) trying to locate her and then finally getting connected to the Coordinator's voicemail, which is where I sit today. It's like I'm working for a ghost company that has all these names and voicemails set up that all look very impressive, but in reality there's one person running around doing everything, trying to maintain the appearance of a large business.
I'm frustrated. Frustrated and more than a little fed up with this shit, maybe fed up enough to think about leaving. Which is saying a lot, I'm not one to jump from job to job willy-nilly. It takes A LOT of dissatisfaction to make me move. We'll see.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 03:44 pm (UTC)It's true, you don't really value good communication until you don't have it. When I first started with this company, I reported to a smaller office where I knew 3 or 4 people by name, and one woman I spoke to so often we had running jokes. Then they got assimilated into this larger office and away went the personal family environment. We'll see how the ASR works out.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 04:25 pm (UTC)I hope you still get that raise. :/
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-27 01:02 am (UTC)*sigh* I don't know why they need the software. They're trying to allay our fears by promising increased productivity and income, but I find it somewhat ominous that through our working with the software, it's designed to gradually improve and refine itself to eventually bring mistakes to a minimum. What happens to us THEN? Who's to say we aren't doing all the grunt work only to be tossed out on our ears when the interface is perfect? Sure it irritates me, but I only have so much energy to be angry at so many things in the course of one day.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-27 01:45 am (UTC)I guess not. I'm sure that they'll still be require to have a human check every report even once the software was perfected. After all, if this software is what I think it is, there are things that can't be perfected. What if the doctor uses a word that the program doesn't recognize? What if the doctor has a funny accent? Your company couldn't afford to let the reports go unchecked, could they?
no subject
Date: 2007-09-27 03:39 am (UTC)I'm choosing to stay optimistic about my future. Sure, they'll always need a human checker. Some doctors are damn near unintelligible and I'm anxious to see how a machine deals with them. One of the most challenging aspects of the job are the hundreds of sound-alike terms that mean radically different things. I'll have to wait and see. Personally I'm actually looking forward to having something new to do to break up the monotony of typing typing all day long.