Transcribers West

"TRANSCRIBERS WEST"

My first-grade teacher said, “To do your best

in all your classes it would you behoove;

so when from time to time we give a test

you'll always know how quickly you improve;

the subjects you most love you'll dazzle at -

if reading, math or science you have shown

to be your greatest gift, then you'll know that

will be the kind of work you'll do when grown."

"For spelling words take out a clean new sheet,”

she told us with her canny eyes a-gleam.

“If all get A's by Friday, but none cheat,

the whole class will be treated to ice cream.”

(Who’d then suspect success is competition,

most work mere techno-wage-slave exploitation

at endless hours of desk-bound inanition -

and all gifts fare for greed's mere despoliation?)

When grown, the lad who's mastered all the ways

of spelling, written essays that were best,

cannot find college but through Army's maze,

beginning with another kind of test

designed to ascertain his aptitude.

They know what literary gifts are worth -

so taught me typing, though I come unglued,

the orders that post men all over earth.

Before computers came along to dump

white-collar drudges on the street en-masse,

the work this ex-GI clerk found to lump,

transform me to the least sway-backed an ass -

most honored line in all the field of greed -

was Medicine. Each prefix, suffix, root

in Dorland's dictionary I had need

to write – help heal, though I'd been taught to shoot.

How many mumbling Chiefs' terms all phonetic

I learned through ear-buds, and how fast they drove

the overshadowed indian frenetic

to join in off-hours stronger braves who strove

against armed capital's belligerents.

We'd rage for union, voting, civil rights

or just to end our insignificance -

risk life, career in hard unequal fights.

I spent too many nights protesting war

'neath siren-crimson clouds of teargas thick

to wake for basement office days galore

'neath flick'ring hum – too often called in sick.

Before voice-recognition programs came

along, in hospitals we typists slaved,

o'er keyboards hunched, our necks and minds to lame

with grief no droning doctors' pills e'er saved

us from, but usually masked – like tranq's

or psychotropics, pain-killers and such.

The profits mostly went to doctors' banks:

for workers health-spa dues were way too much.

For rich or working students who would win,

the path to bach'lor's, Master's or M.D.

technology, admin. or medicine

degrees is ever uphill, gruelingly -

but challenging, self-chosen work no less.

We drudges feeling toil's abuse, cops bust us.

Our betters who've in time achieved success

are blinded to the world's dreadful injustice.

Where sunlight, heat and fresh air's hardly found

I, steeped in words of trauma and disease,

in basement dank of medical compound,

did gripe and grouse, my bosses much displease

to hear me tell coworkers that a strike

is something we in medical melieus -

technicians, nurses – oft'ner seem to like

than other kinds of workers – and should choose.

The fired lackey needs to find work quick:

some half-time job (along with GI Bill

to cover college costs) should do the trick.

A car's too dear – but buses climb each hill.

What price ten desks, three typewriters (all used),

their operators' wages much reduced from what

hospitals paid, plus office rent? Amused,

I thought – so cheap this start-up, while what cut

of profits fill the owner's fat account?

But I was his as well and could, 'til two

semesters passed, afford for no amount

of his abuse to quit and find job new.

Each weekday’s six hours spent in college classes

plus three more bent o’er library carels,

I’d follow dummied down with typist lasses

‘neath four-hour desk-job’s soporific spells.

The worker on my right, six months before,

had quit the hospital whence I’d been canned.

She’d worn her winter coat on their dank floor,

but still the cold was more than she could stand.

She shocked me when she said that I once more

would type St. Mark's tapes, now for much less pay;

but thoughts of college made my spirits soar,

where I'd read verses after work's half-day.

St. Mark’s soon laid their whole pool off. Each girl,

sans Unemployment Benefits, was told

to type the outsourced work for us. Referral

was made to cheap Transcribers West. How cold!

The six remaining typists’ desks, plus mine

would thus be filled. The boss decided I’d

be sent to cold back room – he’d hear no whine -

my hands to slow Addressograph applied,

then made to fix his used postcard machine:

the hospitals in western states we’d ask

for their transcription work. (He wasn’t keen

on offering a raise for this new task.)

A month before my school semester’s end

the distant hospitals began to call.

He’d fly out, set up offices, but send

some local girl to run them – four that Fall.

He next assigned me counting lines of prose

on stacks of billing copies of reports.

Requests for pay increases still arose -

but ever met with negative retorts.

My college found me thirteen units shy.

I knew not when to earn them but that Summer -

nor when I could seek honest work, or why

subsistence drones are tied to such a bummer.

Our driver quit. Guess who the boss then gets

to tool the hundred-mile hospital rounds,

distribute typed reports, pick up casettes -

at wage still minimum? Such greed astounds!

Our typewriters they swapped for new computers

whose mastery on no one's job description

appeared – but management found no refuters -

we'd learn them free, and stifle our conniption.

I went, at Summer's end, Bach'lor's in hand,

to grad' school at the University;

the boss made sure that once again I manned -

now much slowed down – the blame transcription key.

In time an av'rage worker's input rate

would peak, but now the overseer decreed

he'd end our six-cent line, would new-create

each office's pay-scale: two drones whose speed

was greatest would be earning seven. All

the others get just five, but could again

have more if they got faster. (Fiends may call

this "business sense" – it's thievery to men.)

I passed my finals, then at mid-term break

was told the staff must bring our own PC's

from home to have programs installed 'twould take

to work from there. It seems nothing could please

the boss but private contractors to make

of typists – for the overhead he'd save,

but likewise done for health care write-off's sake,

which burden now would fall to each wage-slave.

My used computer's broken floppy port

precluded backing up ten years of verse.

Though technologs' great care I did exhort

they managed to erase them – one last curse!

Computers let Transcribers West then gradually

send all our work to foreign lands without

a minimum-wage law, until eventually

our boss'd grabbed his million – but the lout

had screwed a thousand workers here ere he

retired. Voice recognition programs soon

killed all transcribing work – ultimately

had Science all white collar jobs – some boon!