Work Update

November and December generally sucked, work-wise. My supervisor e-mailed me, "We would like to add some University of Texas accounts to your overnight stat work." It was awful: There were two accounts, and each one had 15 or 20 jobs per night, and each job was anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes in length (and that is exceptionally long, if you didn't know).

What's worse is that apparently in Texas, there is a speed limit on dictation... and it is very slow. It is estimated that doctors normally dictate at around 600 lines per hour. Therefore a 10-minute job would be 100 lines. Nuh-uh: Some 10 minute jobs only had 30 or 40 lines in them, which meant that most of my time was spent sitting around, hands at the ready, waiting for Dr. So-and-so to finish drinking his coffee and figuring out what he wanted to say next.

My transcription speed went from 400 lines per hour down to 250 lines per hour.

So I complained... as politely as I could. I pointed out how all of my other accounts were suffering. I pointed out how these jobs weren't really "stat"... as in needing immediate attention.

Finally, after New Year's, the Texas jobs stopped showing up in my queue, and all was back to normal.

There... now we're all caught up on what's been going on in the Wrinkle Residence, Thailand Branch.