You win some, you lose some

As of yesterday, I transcribed my last file for a particular client. I remember when the client first contracted with the company to have us do their recorded statement transcription. Everyone was excited as this was a major client and we all wanted to make a good impression by returning flawless transcripts in a timely manner.

And we did that. We excelled at it. But to tell you the truth, I always had mixed feelings about the client. While they paid well, their recordings tended to always be on the long side, frequently over 20 minutes. That may not sound like a lot, but the rule of thumb is that it takes about three times the length of a file to transcribe it. So a 20-minute file takes approximately an hour. It was weird, but I could never put my finger on why it would take them longer than any other client to do the same type of interview. Maybe their customers were just more long-winded. So I had a love-hate relationship with them for the years that I worked on their files.

Recently, we got told that we had lost the contract. Unfortunately, during this time when banks are being swallowed by other banks (e.g. WaMu by Chase, Countrywide by Bank of America, etc.) the same thing has been happening in the insurance world. Losing the contract was not due to our quality or timeliness. No, in fact the client was sad about the ending, too. But their company was absorbed into another insurance group and was being forced to go with the vendor that the other company uses. And so it goes in our business. Clients come and go.

We've been assured that there is plenty of work to go around from other clients, but one thing you could say about the longer files is that when you get paid per page, the more pages you do, the more you make. So even if you still have work doing another companies files, you may get the same amount of files, but the total minutes are less and the page counts are less and you make less money. It really is mixed. On the one hand, I am feeling less stressed out from overwork, but on the other hand, my paycheck may be small and that's stressful, too.