GETTING LAID OFF FROM WORK

THE BACKGROUND INTRODUCTION:
A little over a month ago I got laid off from my job and let me tell you it sucks! I am sure anyone who has gotten laid off will agree with me. Let me tell you all about my adventure in getting slapped in the face by Corporate America. Since I signed a contract to do no harm to the company by flogging them in public and so I could get my pittance of a severance pay, I will refer to the company’s name as Joe Blow Inc. or JB Inc. for short.

I am a medical transcriptionist and I had worked at JB Inc. for close to five years and was very happy there and loved what I did. When it came to reviews for raises I had always gotten the highest marks thus giving me the highest increase in salary they would give me. JB Inc. is an outpatient radiology center and I was their assistant manager of transcription for the area that I lived in. My manager and I worked very hard at producing high quality reports and always met our turn around time (or TAT) that was instated by the company. Our philosophy was always patient care and they deserved to have their medical reports as soon as possible so their ordering physicians could care for them effectively.

THE GUT FEELING:
Starting at the end of winter of this year, my manager started to receive emails from Brain-dead (again, changing the name due to the contract I signed), she was part of the IT department who help kept the transcription program running to some respect. Brain-dead is a very appropriate name for her because half the time she never knew how the program worked and when we needed help she was as about as useless as tits on a boar hog. So lets get back to the stellar emails she was sending my manager! Brain-dead was asking my manager all kinds of transcription questions, such as, how many transcriptionists we had working for us (Brain-dead knew this answer since she was the one who set-up all the passwords for our transcriptionist to get into the system.), what the difference was between addendum reports versus amended reports, and what our schedules were. My manager and I thought all of these questions she was asking to be a bit odd, after all why would someone from the IT department need to know how we ran the operations of our office, because her only primary job was to keep the transcription program running. Needless to say I had a gut feeling that something stank in Denmark.

Now it was about spring of this year and everything was going fine and Brain-dead had stopped with the endless emails to my manager on transcription 101. Then out of the blue Brain-dead starts telling us how to do our jobs plus her signature on her emails sported a new title of Senior Reports Manager. My manager and I were in shock, how could someone from IT be promoted to running the transcription department for the whole company? Brain-dead was someone who had never transcribed a report in her life and didn’t have the foggiest notion on the legal aspects of transcription. Of course among the entire transcriptionist in the company, we were wondering who Brain-dead got on her knees for to get this promotion because everyone knew she was the clueless wonder when it came to transcription.

THE REIGN OF BRAIN-DEAD:
Well with all good things they must come to an end and with Brain-dead leading the way the end came quickly. Brain-dead was quick to change the formatting style of our reports, she also change the policy on how addendum reports were to be done, and totally did away with amended reports (I would go into the difference of addendum versus amended reports but I don’t want to bore you and I am sure you really don’t care). Then she started on my manager and I saying we made way too much money and that our salaries would have to be reviewed. I wasn’t to happy with the thought of having her decide what I should make and the thought of having to report to her sicken me but I dealt with it in hopes that the company would see what a debacle Brain-dead was making of transcription. Sad to say the company didn’t and it was my manager and I that had to deal with the ordering doctors calling about what a mess their patient’s reports were.

The final blow to us came when Brain-dead decided that our department should start pooling our work with other states because where the home office was they had too many transcriptionist and not enough work for them to do (or at least that is what she told us at the time). Along with taking our work and pooling with the other states she felt that we needed to let our other contracted transcriptionist go so the transcriptionist in her state would have work. I understand that is how Corporate America works but for our contracted workers who had more than plenty of work to do, I felt this was just not fair to them after all they had tenure, as did my manager and I.

After the contract workers were told they would no longer be needed and were let go, it was just my manager and I that were left. Brain-dead had told my manger and I that we could stay on but at a different rate of pay, which I was willing to do because as I stated in the beginning of this epic I am writing I loved what I did and wanted to continue doing it. Sad to say though, Brain-dead really didn’t want us and only kept us around until she was done implementing the change over to having all of transcription done in her state.

In the beginning of last month my manager and I got the news we were no longer needed and we could leave at that moment. Brain-dead was too chicken to give us the news so she had the V.P. of development come up and do it for her. I did call her after the bomb was dropped on us and of course in true Brain-dead fashion she played the dumb ole brick that we knew her to be. She acted very shocked to hear that we were being let go and that she had no idea about it. I of course, told her to stop being dumb with me and at that point she admitted she knew along.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
I have found a new job since I was laid off and I am doing great. I do feel the way the company let us go was wrong but what can I do about it. I feel that since we were told we could have stayed at a lower rate of pay, the company should be accountable for what they had promise us but since we work in state that is a right to work state, the company can do whatever they want without consequence to them. Do I feel the law is unfair to employees? You bet I do! But lets face it, the laws in our country are set up to protect companies because they are the ones who pay the politicians the big bucks and us, as voters, can’t compete with that.

I do though feel justify in one respect, since I was laid off from JB Inc., they have gone downhill. I do still have friends that work there and they have told me about the mass exit of employees from the company. As for Brain-dead, well she is still running transcription and still doing a miserable job at it. They now do not have enough transcriptionists to do the work and the twenty-four TAT for reports is not being met. Needless to say, Brain-dead is at a loss as to what to do and I laugh at the thought of her pulling her hair out. Call me evil but that is how I feel but I do feel sorry for the doctors and their patients they send there because they are not getting their reports like they should. I guess in the end it really was a blessing I was laid off from a company that only cares about the bottom line and not the patient, ethically I could not work for someone who runs their business like that.