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Does anyone else freak when work runs low?

Posted By: FOMT on 2006-11-19
In Reply to:

We received an email a few days back discussing about a low workload. Also received another email for maybe increased workload on another account. I get nervous and ready to jump when this happens. It's a very bad time of year for this to happen (like any time is a good time). The work is great but the pay is on the low side, especially with my experience (21 years). I took this position some months ago at the referral of another MT I know, hoping this would be it, but I really don't think it is.

I have been browsing the job boards this morning, almost applying with another company, but something made me close the browser, thinking maybe I should hang tight for another week and see what happens.

Does anyone else do this? I'm really thinking I should maybe look elsewhere because I've always thought, work smart, not hard. This pay scale is just a bit too low at 7 cpl.


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I just took 2 IC jobs, just in case one runs out of work
I have the other. I am starting with one that is great in NC (have friends there), and it does have the contract, but I contracted at the less amount so if I do more that is great and then I can get the bonus. The other one out of ME is also wonderful, and neither have restrictions on schedule just want to know about what you will do every couple of weeks and if you have something come up they are still flexible. After taking a week or so to decide, and seeing as well the notes on here about lay offs elsewhere, I decided to do the 2 IC, and also will probably volunteer at the local library, and sell on e bay last (too much work LOL). Good luck to you, but if you don't need benefits because someone else can provide them for your family, I'd personally go with the more flexible status than promise my whole life away to a large MTSO and then fear the threat of taking benefits away or sudden layoff. That is just me. And after a lot of thinking about what I personally value. My family and my paycheck to support my family. Good luck to you.!
The bottom line is if the work runs dry, then

It's not rocket science.


previous note: "filing job falls through" as in the job runs out of work after
you get it.

Sorry about the expansion question - I forgot your history of 15+ years in the biz and having been a teacher. Sounds like you could be a supervisor in a transcription department or be in sales for an MTSO or a TX equipment company, etc. if you live near a big city???
Why does it make someone a freak
if they disagree with you or come on here and complain? Everyone obviously has different situations, especially with MQ where the is absolutely NO consistency from office to office. There are more people unhappy with MQ than there are happy with them - so majority rules - that would make happy MQer freaks - right?? They are not freaks, just in a different situation than you. Glad you're happy though.
YOU ARE A SICK FREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
x
Starting to freak out!

In all the years I have been an MT, I have never been without work and have never NOT been able to find someone hiring. This is ridiculous.  I have even looked for local in-house jobs and...NADA, NOTHING!!



Our docs freak out if youreplace the pt's name with -
nm
You could change yours to freak or something I guess nm
x
Who cares - he's a liberal loony freak anyway.
.
I did live with an alchy and coke freak....sm

When HIS (ex-husband) problems got too much for me to bear and with him going BACKWARDS in the life....I dumped him.  He eventually got clean and sober via a 12-step program and becoming a Born-Again Christian, but 16 years later, know that HORSES don't change colors and while he is *clean and sober* he merely replaced the drugs and alcohol with born-again Christianity and leans on it like a crutch.  He still remains the nasty racist judgmental rude person that he always was, only I didn't know that he was racist, rude, or nasty and judgmental when I married him. 


There is life, I promise, after these *men* - and the word *men* is questionable as real men don't need emotional crutches of any kind.


before your insurance runs out....nm

She can start with the control freak from hell board
I feel so sorry for anyone who has to live with this woman on a daily basis.
agree with Patti and can't believe how many people freak over having IC status...sm
just over the taxes. I mean, we're all grown ups here right? Get over it.
I'm a "study" freak and read up on whatever journals publish.
...it was "discovered" that men's and women's brains are wired differently in one significant respect in the pons, the "cable" that connects side 1 and side 2 of your brain. In women, the pons is rich with connectors and cables and wiring and communication! In men, the number of connections is SEVERELY reduced from that of women.

The study conclusions were interesting, in that the scientists extrapolated that ONE reason men/women are very different about housekeeping (men=slobs, women= neat) is due to this wiring difference. And yes, there are some males who are neat, and some females who are messy.

Upshot is, a number of things predicate of of this rich connection in the pons for women. It's supposed (not tested yet) that "women's intuition" could be based on this. Whereas men see facial expressions, and snippets of conversation, and situations and body language, they don't think much of it. Because the two halves of a woman's brain connect so richly, her "facts" and her emotions are melded together. She notes all of the above, and puts 2 and 2 together and gets it! A man's 2 halves kinda scratch themselves and go "What?"

Then too, when a woman thinks about a dirty house, it's as if the house is crying out to her, filling the circuits, affecting both halves, 'talking' to her, crying out for help. Not so with a guy. One half of the brain notes the mess, the other half does not respond, it doesn't matter to him, it's dirty, so what. Meanwhile, the woman is being driven half to distraction by the interactions between the two brains, creating a DRIVE to get the thing back in order so the mess stops talking to her.

Do I make any sense? Does anybody else recall this, have access to this data? I've lost all references to it.

But for me, at least, it was fascinating!
I notice that my computer runs better when it is
shut down every night. If I leave it up for a couple of days, it starts acting sluggish. I do not think shutting it down wears on it. Plus, like the other poster said, you do leave yourself open for attack when always running if you have cable internet.
I think you either need to get a router that runs Win 98 or upgrade to XP nm
x
I use Avast...it updates almost every day and runs in the background....
all the time. If I get an email attachment within attachment from forwards, it checks all of them before I even open it. It's a free program, too.
I agree with you, but big business runs this country now,

Runs and fragments, my pet peeve with testing sm
I will be honest, I am not that well versed in which is which, but I know an incomplete sentence when I see one. The thing that tickles me is that the companies who make the most of knowing the difference will hand you a VERBATIM account. If you are an experienced MT, you tell me...verbatim means you type out all the sentences as you hear them...run ons, fragments and complete, regardless.

It is nice to have someone on board who really knows their stuff and I understand this. I think it is appropriate to test for things you know that an MT is going to encounter, rather than whether or not she can identify when her verbatim account is dictating in incomplete sentences. Appropriate use of a commas versus semicolons, knowing when to chain together disparate thoughts into one sentence and when to break it up, and knowing how to spell seem far more important to me.

I am in the middle of taking a test for a national company. They handed me 6 voice files, all over 3 minutes long, to transcribe as a test. Yes, they are going to take me over an hour because I have bronchitis right now (ugh I feel awful), but I consider this about the best way to assess my skills. It will give my perspective supervisor a valid way of seeing how I do things on the job.
My daughter's elementary school was on lock down yesterday afternoon cause some freak in a red S

truck drove onto school property behind the school (where the playground is) and tried to get some kids on recess to get into his truck!  Thankfully the teachers on recess duty were paying attention and gathered all the kids back into the building and the school went on lock down.  The police showed up within minutes, but the guy took off before they got there.  So now they are looking for him.  The news was parked in front of my house most of the morning this morning.  I live directly across the street from the school.


It's just scary out there.  My daughter who is in kindergarten was matter of fact about the whole thing.  All she said when she gave me the note from the principal telling parents what happen was "It was for real mom.  We thought it was a drill, but it was for real."  Then I thought what a sad state this world is in when our schools have lock down drills now in addition to fire and tornado drills. 


I live in a small town too and had a false sense of security until the Amish news and until yesterday.  It seems like you simply aren't safe anywhere anymore.


I think you have your results already. Any MQ post runs like wildfire as a rule! You had
55 views on your last poll, and 1 respondent, who felt the opposite! No offense, but isn't that the answer to your poll? The older posted complaints on speed were that it was too fast at the lowest setting! And nobody ever argued with that!
Your taste runs to slender effeminate boys. That's the way it is and how Jude Law
makes a "living" as well as Justin Timberlake.  There are those who aren't attracted to manly men and enjoy seeing a pretty boy.  BTW, Toby Keith has some excellent tight jeans and long legs and I don't see doughboy but it is relative if you prefer the looks of Jude Law/Justin Timberlake/Leonardo DeCaprio.  And he appeared w/o his hat on many times.   Not bald by any stretch like Garth Brooks.  But having said that, Garth Brooks, dough-boy and balding was hot in his day.
My 11-year-old Boxer gets up and paces all night, runs into walls, SM
I have not slept throughout the night since this started. He is not afraid of the dark, but something is wrong. Guess it is old age.
A newer computer with a dual core processor runs cool. No need for it.
``
LOVE ER!!! I watch the re-runs every day, and watch the new ones on Thursday night!!
/
Lowest runs $900 week, highest $1400 week (sm)
Get paid 12 CPL. Been doing transcription for about 12 years.
I get my work from an FTP site that they load the work to, however I don't have pool work so to
speak, but I tell them how many minutes a day I want.  The work is generally put in my box by 5 pm every day, then I have until 10 am the following day for some priority work, or 3:30 pm for the rest, so TAT is not too bad. I would like to work less at night though, but I working on that. My downside is I do not get the same dictators day to day, there are a few I do on a semi-regular basis though, some generate great lines but take longer to do that other doc's and are not "money-makers", I also do not get paid for spaces so that hurts a bit too.  This is WP5.1 too.....so very antiquated but that is what the hospital uses, so not much choice there. But I understand what you mean about the C-phone. I was just doing another job with C-phone recently...they incidentally did not tell me how to get off of the system, which was very simple.  I'd finish a job, then hit stop and hangup if I wanted to get off or quit working.  That is what you need to do if you want to sleep, eat, etc.  Don't feel guilty, do what you signed up for, believe me they watch the pools and will get others to do the work you don't finish.  If they get on your case remind them that you are only PT and only want 500 lines a day, etc.  It's not worth killing yourself over.  Good Luck.
You go by your schedule and have no work. Everytime I get on to work, there is always work.
x
Then you would have no life at all except work, work, work if you did that. I wouldn't do it. nm
.
Same thing with nationals. You work all the time to keep the account caught up when others dont work
and then when they decide to put a whole lot of extra people on your accounts and run you out they could care less about how much you worked.
Have a hospital I work for and they consistently change work types and do line counts. (sm)
Management just doesn't understand in order to crank out the work you need to be proficient by typing the same accounts. Go figure, they just don't get it ??
Usually work "live" on a Cphone, while connected. There are ways to record & work off line, bu
s
steady work...gearing up to start new account....but there was no work on Tues as it was a holiday
Be patient with your eyes open....
I work for Warminster at MQ and I am sick to death of being jerked around with no work all the time.
I would like a job where I can depend on the work and it does not seem to be in this office of MQ.
Speaking of offshoring MT work, who does not directly send work offshore?
Just curious.  Has anyone got a list of companies who do not send work offshore?  Precyse?  MQ?  Spheris? 
Becky you work in a great place. With no one hovering, I bet you get a lot more work done w/o agoniz
wants what. The only people qualified to do QA on my reports are the dictating doctors and the rest is just pure waste of money and time. If I have a question fine. But this random QA bites and hurts everyone. BTW, I don't have random QA for those who seem to think I may have an ax to grind. No dog in this fight. Just common sense.
Good. Why dont you send some our way. What office do you work for so I can call and get your work.
:
Before needing to work, I did volunteer work through the Junior League where I am from in Texas. lm

Junior League was like a full-time job sometimes, but I loved it. Now that I have to work, even though it is from home, I still volunteer through my son's school.  I am a school teacher in my previous (pre-MT) life, so I volunteer my tutoring services for children who need the help beyond what the schools are able to provide but whose parents cannot afford to pay for private tutoring. I also know how you felt about being afraid.  I was strangely afraid before I joined the Junior League.  It was just the unknown. But I was SO blessed by being able to help.  Honestly, I am sure that it helped me just as much, if not more, than I helped others.  Go for it.  You won't be sorry.  (Just remember that you have to say NO when you have to say no, okay?  Remember that and you will be richly blessed by the experience!)


nm would you mind if I asked where you work and what type of work hosp, clinic ?
x
All I know is it caused the company I work for to be unable to do all work due today and the rest
:+
Just return the work, submit your bill, the scurry and find more work elsewhere. sm
They will never meet with you before next week. It is Thursday, already. Be prepared to sue for payment, because you will probably need to. But, most of all, find other work elsewhere, because I have a feeling this final payment will be a long time coming.
I work on Escription platform and the adapter didnt work for me. I tried it on my laptop though
and the foot pedal would just not play correctly with the adapter. I think others have tried it and done it but it just didnt work for me.
IC sets their own hours. As long as the work is done by the deadline, you decide when to work.

Glad I work somewhere where you cannot cherrypick....our work is divvied out by minutes and - sm

the office manager (who does not normally transcribe) dishes out the work, so some days are easy, others are a mix.  So no cherrypicking is possible.  You type up what is given to you, period.  She will alternate the tough one's out so no one person gets him/her all the time unless they want him/her and are used to that doc, or everyone gets a little piece, etc. There are days when I ask for easy work (tired, chemo day, Jen sick, or a lot going on, etc.) but not often, generally I get a mix but they all get easier the more you do them.  I am not working as much as I should be of course, every week is different here so I adjust my limited work schedule accordingly, so sometimes it hard to get better at certain docs.  I used to have a lot of blanks with the Trauma ER unit, but I have been doing that a lot lately and now and very good at it, still a time consuming account but at least I am improving. -----------------------  But I believe the OP was stating she did it to clear out the log, not to make more lines, and only when she was asked to do so.  At an old job I had #s meant everything, everyday we would get report (2=4 x a day) of the backlog, and emails pleading us to work, work, work.  The QA rules sucked  (MQ probably is basing their new plan loosly on this one), however we did not get penalized, just chewed out if you sent in too much work to QA (over 5%, and was 80% ESL), I would imagine eventually fired if you continued to do it. They were a great place to work for until they re-organized....it all went downhill from there.  This is why I prefer smaller MTSOs, it's not all about the #s, yes, they want production too but at least it's not so cut-throat. 


i used to work for a company that divided the work types up and i loved it. sm
there were only 4 of us working a major teaching hospital. someone was assigned surgery, different assigned discharges, different admits, etc. we all had the backup work type in case the original assignee wasn't available and were cross trained. it made us much more efficient, ability to get used to dictators, set macros, and in the long run we were all much happier.
Used to work in Cooperstown, NY - and on the way to work is a huge turkey farm
It made me never want to eat turkey again - seeing them all cramped up against the fence and cages, packed tightly, no room to move. Actually, it made me want to do some harm to the farmer who found this acceptable.
Do not work for Amherst if you can work for any other office in MQ. It is terrible. They overload
accounts terribly. We are always running out of work or need to have 8 or 9 backups to get lines in. This is the way it is. There may be a few out there that it is different but I do acute care and was just transferred there along with my office and everyone in my office is in the same boat. Not a good deal at all.
An MQ recruiter told me yesterday if work is low they "cut off" the work

SEs are doing it.  She also told me that it is written in MQ policies


that MQ can let go EMPLOYEES without notice (I'm not saying statutory employees here, I'm saying employees).


 


You're lucky they work for you. I've never gotten a refill to work right, ever.
x
Has anyone breast fed while trying to work at home, can you do this and still work full time?
It seems like the more literature I read on the subject, the longer it seems to take, especially in the beginning when you are breast feeding every two hours, or does it really just depend on the baby?
HAHA! Yes! I have those daily! But it's not really work as I work nights, it's little things l
turning on the pool filter in the morning and then in the afternoon running out there because I thought I forgot to turn it on. Or preheating the oven and then 5 minutes later saying "shoot! I forgot to preheat the oven!" It's really bad. And I'm only 31. I'm not 90!

I don't know if dementia or Alzheimer's runs in my family, but this could be a sign of something to come. Or as my husband says - you jut don't pay attention to much. He's probably right!