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CHERRY PICKER

Posted By: curious on 2005-07-09
In Reply to:

I just started for a new company and the transcriptionists there seem to talk about cherry pickers all of the time.  It sounds to me like the people who have been there a while do not welcome the new employees coming in.  Could someone explain to me exactly what they mean by a cherry picker???? TIA


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what's a cherry picker?
I'm new at this, so please excuse my ignorance.  What is a "cherry picker" and what does "ESL" stand for?
oooh! I have one!! Cherry-Picker Park! (nm)
x
I respectfully disagree. The BEST is CHERRY cake with cherry drizzle. YUMboooooooooooooooyyyy!

cherry
This is unbelievable. You should have really complained
your boss.
cherry picking
Your boss WANTS you spy on each other AND rat them out? so much for ethics and morals..I'm too busy doing my own work to worry what others are doing.
Cherry Picking

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.  


How can you cherry pick on MQ DQS?
How do you get info on whether hospital complains or not about cherry picking?  How do you figure an office is closed because of cherry picking.  My office is far away from where I live.  My managers are just names.  I don't know them.  They live in other parts of the country also, far away from the home office.  I know nothing about who is doing what nor correspondence from the hospital to the manager or why MQ closes offices (I was told this is an economical measure since most managers are working out of their homes as well.) How do you come across all of your information regarding the inner workings of MQ and who is cherry picking and how?
cherry picking on DQS
The people working in the room than handles the work flow..the room that controls the dictation put the easier dictation on your track.  They will do that when transcriptionists complain they cant do the **hard** doctors.  They are able to put you on whatever track they want to..You have no control but the office does.
cherry picking
Which is worse, cherry pickers or greedy hogs who take all the work? That's the case where I am desperately trying to get away from. These people overhire as well as have a lot of job hogs.
cherry picking

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


Cherry picking

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.


Cherry Picking!
YES,so true and now the hardest dictators seem to easy and you meet the challenge! That is what keeps the job interesting as well. Yes, love the easy reports here and there to give me a break but the challenge is what keeps me going.
it's CHERRY PICKING and she could not get away with it at MQ
You get a report and call wawawa I have a cell phone dictation and I REFUSE to do it you would be laughed out of a job.
Not for us, but for the cherry-picking
management person who did 4600 lines in 1 day- that had to be done by picking out all the normal reports on the system and them getting her sweet little bonus. What a cheat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you can't cherry pick....

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.  


Cherry picking....

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.     


Yes, I do cherry pick...
but very infrequently and only if I think somebody else would do a better job of transcribing a particular dictator - all of us on my account do it to a minimal extent and no one is bothered by it - sometimes U feel like a nut, sometimes U don't...
cherry juice
I used to drink cherry juice on a regular basis for stiffness in my knees. I researched it and there was much positive research done by Michigan State Univ.  Info is on the web if you're interested.  For me, I drank it for several months.  In the beginning it was palatable but as the days went on it got to be awful to get down.  And , as someone else pointed out, it cleans out your system better than a stick of dynamite!  If you decide to use it, be sure it's the right kind-usually sells in concentrate and is sour cherry juice and ranges in price from $14-18.00 depending on where you get it.  Good luck if you decide to try it.
what is CHERRY PICKING ?
??
Sometimes I wish I could cherry pick

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 am not cherry picking. sm
If I was cherry picking I would refuse to do the account. I have 2 other accounts. I am hoping that by doing this account it will come to be something that isn't so hard for me anymore. I learn everyday. But that account is very hard to make lines on. If I could choose I would like to work on an acute care that wasn't a learning hospital, but I know I am gaining great experience with this account. I don't mean to sound like I am a cherry picker but some say why stay where you don't like the account. When you are a newbie you don't have that luxury if you wanted it. I know some MTs who work for the same company I do with many years exp. who refuse to do acute care. I know that is their preference but I understand what you are saying. It does get annoying when some pick and choose. I have never told them I won't do it. I don't like it but if I wasn't going to do it I would find another company. I wouldn't stay at a company and refuse to do the work I was offered because then other MTs have to do it and it isn't fair to cherry pick and make others do what you don't want to do. And I have that where I work. I have people that work there and have many, many years exp. and refuse to do the hard acute care accounts. I used to get so fustrated. As a result that is more of the hard account I have to do because they don't want to but like you say that is part of the job so I will just have to deal with other cherry pickers.
cherry-picking is cherry-picking
I work both weekend days because that's the only time I get good work, so when the they ask for extra help and everyone says they'll only help if they get good work, then I'm stuck with the leftover crap nobody wants on my usual shift while everyone who's "helping out" is getting the good stuff. sorry, but cherry-picking is cherry-picking no matter when!
To all you CHERRY PICKERS...This one's for you!

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...


Cherry picking.......
I worked for several small MTSOs now and the voice files are sent over, so I get what is there regardless.

I did work for nationals over the years and understand your situation. But, if they called me to do OT or work on the weekend, I would flat out ask for some good dictators if they wanted me to help out, and they would pass those on to me, but during my shift, I got what I got, which were the horribly dictating ESLs, mumblers, etc. When I would ask about cherry pickers, they would tell me no, they didn't allow that, but of course it was going on. You could tell it was. I did work for one company that definitely would not allow that and we all got stuck with the good, bad, and the ugly, which is only fair.
cherry-pckers

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. 


cherry picking
bring it to your supevisor's attention. We got got a notice about doing that from our supervisors.  It is not taken lightly.
Cherry pickers
This has always been a problem in this field unfortunately, when I first started the work was assigned to us but with technology changing, it started to be work pools and the bad dictators started coming. Unfortunately the people who cherry pick are only hurting themselves, yeah it may be good for the paycheck but it is not helping their skills and one day, they will be the only one on the account for one reason or another and their production will take a real nose dive. We had a a person do this continually on one position I had years ago and eventually the supervisor started routing the bad dictators to her for a week or so and believe me, the cherry picking stopped real fast.
Cherry picking, what would you do?
I guess I am just frustrated.  In my company we can see what work is available, we have the ability to select our work, and we can see what everyone else is working on.  I am relatively new.  Recently I figured out that a couple of the MTs do nothing all morning but wait for the reports that have canned dictation.  I guess they must just keep refreshing the screen and the instant one pops up, they are on it.  Doing this they are probably able to rack up a very nice line count within two or three hours.  Then they will do just enough actual work to make their 1200 for the day.  I wouldn't mind if they would do some actual work while waiting for the canned stuff to appear, but that's not the case.  I want to say something but I'm just not sure.  What would you do?
Cherry picking
Landmark works on the Bayscribe platform and as far as I can tell it doesn't allow cherry picking.  If you get a job and for some reason cancel it and request the next job, you get the same job.  I have done that not because of cherry picking, but because I had to cancel out for some reason, or I lost my web page.  It comes back with the same job in my queue.
What do you do about cherry pickers

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.) 


cherry pickers will stll be around. I for one am and can do SM
ESLs, Neurology, Cardiology and Ops. When I'm on radiology I cherry pick since I get paid by report and do just fine :)

Regarding cherry picking posts below

Could someone actually tell me how an at-home worker gets information regarding cherry picking trainees from India and managers getting complaints from hospitals.  I just transcribe for MQ and don't know how one would cherry pick on this platform DQS.  No manager has ever called me to tell me the hospital is complaining about cherry pickers.  No manager has ever sent a memo telling me that the office was being closed because of cherry pickers.  I just transcribe what comes across my screen with no correspondence from managers other than account updates either slow work or bonus times.  I have no idea who else is working on the account, Indian or otherwise. 


How would one go about obtaining all of the information to establish cherry picking or not cherry picking and the nationality of the cherry picker?


Thanks in advance for any answers you can give.  Perhaps I am living in an isolated world and maybe my account is cherry picked and don't know to complain.


 


 


stop cherry picking or get out
STOP CHERRY PICKING..for pete sake..dont try to justify it..JUST DO THE FREAKING WORK AS IT IS ASSIGNED TO YOU..PERIOD!!  Im one of them who gets the **crap** work, the extremely hard Asian or Spanish doctors who put the phone in their arm pit, the doctors who are half asleep and mumble..please!!!!!!!  just do the work as it is assigned to you.  We all need a pay check and I work hard for mine, I expect you to do the same or get out of the profession of medical transcription..
FIRE THE CHERRY PICKERS
They ought to track down your email and find out who you are and fire your arse!!!!
tank the cherry pickers

Cherry picking sure hurts the hospitals because they are waiting on these reports and if the cherry picker skips over, then if no one else is on-line, its gonna take a while to do those reports..so it hurts the hospital and the trans service..and the patient, which is supposedly what we are all about..LEGAL ACCURATE MEDICAL RECORDS..I cant believe that a cherry picker would even post here..I would be too ashamed to admit that I shaft my coworkers, the hospital and trans service I work for..


Still sounds like cherry picking to me.
Refusing to do dictators from wherever they dictate sounds like cherry picking to me. I don't like to transcribe dictators who use speaker phone, but I do 'em anyway, like it or not.
All this cherry picking stuff LOL
Could be that those accusing high producers of "cherry picking" might possibly make a better line count if they 1)  Quit trying to find out how many lines their co-workers have typed and 2)  Stay off the boards until they have reached their goal.  I don't think posting to newsgroups pays all that well.  I don't care which company it is, no typing, no money.
Routing isn't cherry picking. :)
Routing is business...it all has to get done, the good, the bad, the ugly.

I'm not worried about getting the bad reports, either.

Sooner or later, you'll be out of a job and I won't because I can REALLY do the work. I've already seen that happen. I usually get rewarded for my extra effort as well...a few particular jobs or dictators if I do some really ugly ones. Is that cherry picking? I don't think so. It's called business. It's called getting a reward for doing something that others cannot. It's why I'm given a little leeway. :)

Happy typing.
There are all types of cherry picking

Sometimes it's like the game of Monopoly - I'll trade you St Charles Place for Marvin Gardens. You take a couple of choice dictatators in exchange for doing a couple that other people have trouble doing.

Another example is giving a "good show." By that I mean ... there are 20 reports on the system - Two of them are 10 minutes each and the rest are 2 minutes each. You've got two hours to get the work done, so, you do all the small reports. Changes are it'll be the same amount of lines either way, but it's psychological for the client. They think they're getting more work back.

I remember years ago when I worked in a hospital. There was one doctor who sent me screaming from the room (he sounded like a deranged chipmunk). They hired a new gal who had no trouble doing him (she also had a lot more experience than me). She knew I hated him and said, "I'll go him if you let me down so-and-so." You betcha!! We were happy as clams. I got rid of the worst one, and she got to do her favorite one.

The truth of the matter is, I would speak with those in charge and explain the situation. Tell them how you feel (very frustrated). See what they can do/say. If they won't ... personally ... I update my resume and look elsewhere.

Then again, maybe I just have a lower tolerance level than others. 


Black cherry juice

Is black cherry juice good for arthritis?


 


Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!



yeah I did some cherry picking

on one of your accounts, but that was to make up for the lines I lost doing a doctor on another one of your accounts that you didn't want to do because you said you couldn't understand a word he was saying. Well, duh, neither could I the first time I did him. Took me three hours to make 300 lines, thanks to you. Now we're even.


Cherry pickers should be FIRED!!
If your co-worker was any kind of a true MT she would grow up and do whatever came up in her q. Tell your supervisor! I wish I knew this idiots phone number. It really ticks me off when people cherry pick. You have my sympathy girl.
Cherry picking in Escription...sm
Is it possible for MTs to be cherry picking from a pool in Escription?  I swear there are tons of ER reports in my acute care pool and a other types of reports and it seems like I get almost no ER, somedays none, but if I look at the Q before loading it would seem with the order shown that I should get some. 
Cherry picking, my dear...nm
s
Cherry picking revisited
A few months ago I complained here about the rampant cherry picking at my place of employment.  My boss finally did something about it - she laid down the law that we could not begin today's work until all of yesterday's is completed.  Fine.  But NOW, my favorite cherry picker has simply revised her strategy.  She watches the rest of us work, and the INSTANT someone takes the last job from yesterday, there she is to pluck the cherries.  We wade through the crap, and then she helps us with the stuff we don't need help with.  Any ideas?  I think my boss doesn't want to hear anymore about it from me.
Can't cherry-pick on our platform...
Like you, AnudderMT, I can see the job I'm doing and the next one in my queue. I can see what account and what work type it is, and how long it is--but can't see who dictated it; the only way to do that is to accept the job.

And at our company, abandoning a job once accepted had better be done for nothing less than fire or blood. Or a crashed computer.

From our end, there's simply no way to go in and pick out what we want to do. Our supervisors have access to the point that they can pick out and reserve jobs for us, but that's only done under very special circumstances.

Then again, sometimes you can tell... if it's a Saturday morning and it's a procedure report about 90 seconds long, it's one of the gastroenterologists catching up on his EGDs and colonoscopies (which are done to a "standard" with lots of freebie lines). And if it's getting late on a weeknight and it's a cardiology procedure of some sort, it's either Dr. Horrid or Dr. Even-Worse, and that's about the time I decide I've had enough and log off.... :)
cherry-picked routing to VR and offshore
Ethical to route the work in a systematic way according to the documented processes of your company. Unethical to route work "as you see fit" if "as you see fit" is defined based on who you like and who you don't, as you described above. Tired of hearing the complaining? Get over it and get used to it, because it isn't going to stop and it is only going to get worse.

On what basis to you know that the "paranoid" plotting and speculation about dictation being cherry picked to go to India or VR is unfounded? I notice the natural variation in who is dictating, etc., the true "roll of the dice" as you describe it, and that doesn't bother me.

It isn't that it "has" to be more than just fate. It is more than just fate.

VR and offshore transcriptionists can't handle the tough dictation, yet we know they are being used. Do you think what is being routed to VR and offshore is random, the luck of the draw? I don't.

So I don't know why I shouldn't suspect that if on the average, in an ongoing trend, dictation is getting worse for domestic transcriptionists to a degree that could not be a cooincidence, it means that for reasons other than coincidence, easier work is being routed somewhere else.

I can tell you are comfortable with "the way things have always been," and change makes you nervous, but get used to the fact that whether it has always been this way or not, it is not going to continue to be that way.

Get used to the ideas of MTs standing up for their rights and fighting back or quit reading the complaints and type away in your happy, sheltered world. The status quo is not going to continue.
my supervisor cherry picked the normal
cataract surgeries, normal any other type of surgeries she could using the same illogical reasoning that you have used. That is because she is too incompetent to do transcription.
cherry picking is a waste of time

if you get an ESL that you cannot understand, type them anyway the best you can.  If you have to leave blanks, then leave them.  You will get used to the doctor eventually.  (Sometimes I think it will never happen with some!)  Also, if you send the same doctor in enough with blanks, they will usually send you samples or maybe the doctor might start actually speaking BETTER if enough MTs are having issues and send him in to QA often enough.  The cherry pickers are hurting themselves in the long run.  If the same MTs keep getting them and doing well because they are used to them, then they will not get sent to QA. 


Take as many different worktypes as  you can and as many different doctors as you can, it will benefit you in the long run, make  you more flexible. 


Service owners/cherry pickers
Why do service owners never seem to notice cherry pickers? Even going to great lengths to deny there are any in their group?
They offshore so you get the cherry picked leftovers.
Sound quality is lousy. Totally rigid on their schedule. They have the attitude that you should be grateful to work for them.