[Part 2 is presented first because it is ready first. It is not Part 1 because Part 2 relates incidents that followed those of Part 1. Part 1, which is pending, recounts mainly my first experience of the division of Ferguson, in 2004 and 2005 and/or 2006, when it was located and functioned fairly autonomously, as the apparent flagship division of CommonHealth. An update, made 9/4/12, is included below between asterisks.]
[The fellow editor I have pseudonymed Sqodox has been in touch with me within the past several days, and the entry below, which includes e-mail content from him from 2006, does not imply that he either approves or expressly disapproves of my use of this material.]
[See my June 28 blog entry on my concerns about confidentiality. “Confidentiality criteria” (abbreviated “CC #__) referred to are numbered per the criteria listed in that June 28 entry. Also, as noted in my July 3 blog entry, where appropriate, I can refer to “data on file” (or “DOF”; this term usually, in typical industry parlance, refers to information that is in the possession of the Big Pharma company; but I make adapted use of the term here), which will usually signify documents I have copies of; some may be drawn from the Internet, and others not.]
A scorecard on one player: Jen C.’s role
Let me banish some illusions you might have, if you’ve closely followed my CommonHealth story to this point.
If you thought “Jen C.” was a person directly involved in an allegation of “sexual harassment” made about me in 2010, she isn’t. She was a longtime friendly-to-me element at CommonHealth in the first few years of the past decade—and a good measure of how things changed from 2007 on. She turns up in a few episodes of my history with CommonHealth, including a few I’ve already posted, but she is not a significant part of my story after 2003, though she will again become somewhat important later….
Thumbnail sketch of my time at different divisions, through 2006
From 2001 through 2006, the array of divisions of CommonHealth I worked at, some for the briefest of times, was: Noesis, Xchange, Quantum, MBS/Vox, Carbon, Adient, Qi or some such small division, and Ferguson (and at the last, my first stint was in 2004). I’m not sure if there was another division I worked at. [CC #1 in some cases; CC #3]
After the period in early 2007 in which I worked under Mark K. at what was the successor to the newly combined Quantum and Xchange divisions, I believe the only division of CommonHealth I worked in was Ferguson
In this entry we will take a step back to 2006, which—as I couldn’t know at the time—represented a curdling of the CommonHealth culture in terms of what I could see when I worked within it: more specifically, my time at the one division of MBS/Vox would end up comprising part of the basis for my not getting paid on time for a few months’ work, a piece of the mess I experienced in the breakdown of “The Gary Laverne Group” (GLG) in 2007 (see my first July 9 blog entry, “…Anecdote 4…”). That is, by early 2007 GLG would owe me several thousand dollars in payroll pay, and it was for work for two firms—the firm in Berkeley Heights I worked at for about six months in 2006 (I was owed for about four weeks there, and this comprised the bigger half of the total owed); and MBS/Vox, at which I worked through about a four-month period in 2006, and which was the basis for less than half, I believe, of the GLG amount I was owed. [CC #3, 4]
Interestingly, part of the outrage of the delayed-pay situation is that the firm in Berkeley Heights solidly wanted me to come back for more work starting in February 2007, but I put my foot down with GLG and stopped working at the Berkeley Heights firm until I was paid the large amount owed. [CC #3, 4] With MBS/Vox, the situation was different: they used my services pretty heavily in 2006, and then there was some hint I’d be brought in again in 2007, but a call for me from them was never made, as far as I knew through mid-February 2007. [CC # 3] But once I opted to “go on strike” with GLG, this clearly meant I was not available for MBS/Vox, even if they did call GLG for me.
“Homecoming?”—back at MBS/Vox [CC #3]
In September 2006, I started working at MBS/Vox, this time through GLG, for the first time since summer 2003. The year 2006 was a busy one for me in that I worked at numerous medical-media locations, some through GLG, and some not. When I started at MBS/Vox in 2006, the same year I had already put a chunk of time in at the place in Berkeley Heights I mentioned above, as well as at Cardinal Health in Wayne
Though I didn’t know it at the time, this was the start of a huge fracture in my experience of medical-media work—and not just regarding CommonHealth. This was because, with GLG’s breakdown [CC #3, 4], not only was my trust in the medical-media area of work shaken, but more objectively it certainly represented that the waters were getting choppy through the medical-media industry as a whole, as you could see in various “symptomatic” ways from 2007 on. And of course this was a natural consequence of sea changes (whose details I couldn’t know all of) happening amid the Big Pharma clients that these medical-media firms served, some of which broad changes could be gleaned from a less directly knowledgeable perspective in mainstream-media stories on pharmaceutical topics. (Through the time of writing, with the Big Pharma developments only getting more dramatic since 2007, stories abound of patents for big-selling medications running out; Big Pharma firms paying multi-billion-dollar fines/penalties for alleged marketing wrongdoing; Big Pharma firms leaving New Jersey for various legitimate business reasons….)
My return to MBS/Vox was a sort of “mixed homecoming.” For one thing, at the time the division was located in a rather cramped Lanidex Plaza building in Parsippany, not in Wayne Township, where I’d worked at it last; and this was before CommonHealth’s big move to its new, centralized location. This temporary relocation of MBS/Vox was one phase of the relocation of all CommonHealth divisions to the new building. So there was something uprooted and transient-disoriented about MBS/Vox in its location in fall 2006. But for me, the work was quite determined as to nature, and familiar due to my experience with it, so generally there was nothing especially distorted or new about what I was doing in my own sphere of responsibilities.
My time there in 2006 seemed productive enough, and it seemed I was trusted enough—and what direct management I faced even pressed me to pump a lot out, ostensibly because the budget year was ending. I rolled with the demands as I ever did with this division; of course, my adaptability even extended—when CommonHealth finally moved the last of its divisions out of the Lanidex Plaza building to the new, large building in Parsippany—to my going to this new location for the last few weeks of my MBS work. Indeed, this wasn’t a choice left up to me; the work was there, MBS was willing to have me continue with it; the main logistical change was my needing to be buzzed in, or whatever, via the new high-tech door-security system at the new building. Not a big deal, you might say, but it’s amazing how the feasibility of staying with certain high-enough-paying jobs can actually founder on something so relatively simple.
(When “Gary
All this GLG/pay mess was not an issue—the problem practically could not enter my awareness yet—during most of my time at MBS/Vox in 2006. It wouldn’t become so until late December 2006 or, much more extensively, in early 2007. In September 2006, I still seemed optimistic about my work there, and also took a sort of wistful look at my earlier memories of MBS/Vox, as reflected in an e-mail exchange I had with the temp Sqodox [see my July 5 blog entry, “Start of a Biopsy (this won’t hurt a bit)”], who had not been at CommonHealth at all since 2003, or if he had, it was only very briefly, maybe in 2004.
I had told him some news about the old MBS/Vox compadres among the permanent staff there, and he responded as follows (on September 22, 2006), with my own responses to each of his points inserted in the body of his e-mail in my long response of September 24. [CC #3] (This may seem like an exchange of several short e-mails, but it is actually one long e-mail with our comments interleaved.) Sqodox’s comments start with + and my responses start with ***, and I only fix a few things grammatically or punctuation-wise for clarity:
“Greg,
+ I can’t believe that even Jen has changed!!!! [I don’t know what I said to elicit this…]
***She hasn’t changed that much, but of course I didn’t get a good look at her. She seemed like in a busy-sloppy-appearance mode early in the day—maybe partly because it was casual Friday—but then looked more herself (2002 era) in the afternoon. She seems to have a position where they keep her running a lot more.
+ AND, I am quite impressed that you already remember all their names.
***You know, with some of them, I was quite rusty at first. It was strange being there—I really felt like “I don’t think I can ‘go home again’”… Working for Vox seemed, before I was there last week, like a one-shot deal; you have a productive time when you’re there [as we were in 2002-03], but once you’re let go for strange reasons, and 2004-06 intervene (the social changes in Bush’s America), it just seems you [can’t] be back there again with the same spirit and good faith. So I knew I could remember some names but it took some work. It was almost like remembering details of a dream, or of something from 10 years ago. And of course, I looked at name plates to “cheat.” [Surname] was the name of that [first name] woman. Incidentally, she is a vice president [now; she had been approximately entry level when Sqodox and I were there in 2003], which mainly seems to mean she goes out to haul in [new] business.
[***]I should tell you more later about doing the old OCing again. The task is pretty much the same—in fact, though they have more bells and whistles for rules to follow, the standards we followed (which I think we pretty much developed ourselves), are the same to a surprising extent. So I wonder why they let three of us go so unceremoniously. But they definitely try to have a big set of rules for everyone to follow the same way now. Incidentally, I found they never had [Asian] Indians [outsourced] do QCing [which I thought I’d heard in 2004, and which I’d told Sqodox to his shock in a prior year (CC #3, arguably 4)] but they do have Indians do some of the first drafts of the transcripts, which isn’t as bad an idea as having them do QCing. [CC #3, arguably 4]
+ [One manager] was always nice to me. Is [higher-level manager] gone?
***I agree, [first-named manager] seemed nice, but she could be a tough cookie when she needed—as I guess is to be expected for someone who stayed so long in the business. [Higher-level manager] moved to Health Learning Systems, which was the big department around the corner from MBS/Vox in Wayne Wayne
+ What about that guy who [would] only talk with that school teacher guy? He sat between [higher-level] manager and [first-named manager].
***I know who you mean, and I forget his name…it almost comes to me…he left in 2004 or 2005, I think.
+ I can’t even remember her name, but is that fun chick that we used to do QC with still there? You know, that chick who was a walking encyclopedia of medical terminology…
***That was [Belinda, pseudonymed in the July 9 GLG blog entry]—she was hired by M[BS] as a staffer [in 2003], and then was let go in 2005. She ended up in Carbon (another CommonHealth division) as a freelancer employed directly by the company (not through a placement agency)… That was late 2005, when I worked at Carbon for a few weeks. Mary [surname] was running editorial for Carbon [and Mary had been a fellow temp of myself and Sqodox at MBS/Vox in 2002]. So you had myself, Mary, and [Belinda] there, and we all had been Horizon temps at MBS/Vox in 2001-02, the first time we were there. Mary left Carbon earlier this year, but [Belinda] may still be there.
##
That is the end for specifically CommonHealth-related talk.
Sudden dropping-out of a young coworker
One interesting little tidbit of that time is one of those things you don’t fully know the reason for when it happens, but whose likely (hypothesized) reason becomes clearer in retrospect, considering all sorts of circumstantial things.
In early November 2006, my immediate contact, Pia L. (with Italian last name), an educated, nice young woman who handled my scheduling information at the MBS/Vox end and distributed my work to me, e-mailed notice of her leaving. I still have a copy of the e-mail, which I printed out November 5. [DOF] The e-mail has a confidentiality disclaimer, but what has always puzzled me about it is how suddenly she left, and that she gives no explanation but seems in tone regretful and/or sad in her brief notice. [CC #3] She directly addressed and copied several entities, companies and individuals, regarding whom you can say all needed to know, for simple work-logistics purposes, that she was leaving. She copied both me individually and GLG as a firm. [CC #3] She references who our new contact is to be, a woman who I don’t think I had ever had reason to deal with directly prior to this. There is a note I hand-jotted on my copy of the e-mail about my leaving a phone message for this new woman regarding her needing to get an e-mail I tried to send her. *UPDATE: On August 31, 2012, I found a copy of an e-mail (dated October 26, 2006) that contains a hand-jotted note of mine that says Pia quit, and that I'd heard this November 3. I don't think this undermines my point about how, generally, Pia seems to have been handled; while she may not have been fired, it makes sense she was handled in a way as led her to quit. Obviously, given my speculative position, and the likely defensive position of people still at MBS/Vox who would have a stake in how this item is discussed, our views could diverge. I think in general the e-mail from Pia that I have strongly suggests she was not managed in a way where she could have said management "fully had her back," and the management that I received by her ad hoc successor certainly suggested a cheap-o way of operating on MBS/Vox's part at the time.*
The new woman was my contact for the last month-plus I did work there. She clearly did not have the qualifications of Pia, in terms of education and subtle technical attunement to the nature of the QC’ing work. She seemed like nothing so much as a back-office worker, like a low-level accounting type, who I believe had been with CommonHealth some time. I remember that, particularly in December 2006, when there seemed as hard a push to get QC’ing transcripts jammed through my hands as ever (if not more so), she seemed good only in the sense of knowing what she had to have me get done—as if she was directed to do so from above—but had very little if any appreciation for what this meant regarding certain little technical issues that might come up.
I felt that I pushed through QC’ing about as hard if I ever had, if not harder, if I was left to pacing myself in a “quickening” way. And even then, I could happen to be pushed by this woman to get through stuff more quickly. I think I felt the last few transcripts were, for them to be pushed through as they were, not that important as to how well they were done. And then, as soon as these were done, that was it, my time was up. As I seem to recall, no friendly conversation, what’re you doing for the holidays or such. I was a little surprised that, given my willingness to accommodate her pushing, she had so little sense to be more friendly in my closing up time there, but I think I attributed this (at least in part) to her being, as I felt, a high school-grad type and not so much a college-grad type.
The sense I had in 2006 of there being at MBS/Vox a lot of year-end cleaning-up-shop to do, amid a tight budget, was very clear. [CC #3] It certainly was different from how things had been with QC’ing for MBS/Vox in 2003.
In more recent years, it has struck me as likely that Pia was fired; more generally, I can think of a number of twenty-somethings, including at Ferguson in later years, who would seem as a group to be more apt to be fired or laid off than any other age group. [CC #3] Since, in general, (1) twenty-somethings there have tended to be eager, earnest, and innocent—with their eyes on their first greeting you usually looking as if they are glad to say “appreciate me!” and to join hands on The Good Ship Big Media Company—and since (2), probably, they are the first to be dumped and, whether or not as an obvious insincere excuse, judged as “unfit,” when the real issue may be that they don’t adapt to the more ruthless business expectations there, it would then seem that Pia was jettisoned without adequate grounds, and more specifically this was probably done as a cost-cutting move. Her competence, in the longer view, doesn’t seem to me like it was an issue (though, as is often the case when someone is first purged, you wonder if he or she “did something wrong” to incur their dismissal).
I think what really seals the hypothesis that there was a lot of grimy cost-cutting shit going on there in the last few months of 2006, such as to purge Pia like an old broom, was GLG’s inability to get paid for MBS/Vox work time for months. “Gary” told me, in about February 2007, that he was owed by them for time back to September 2006—about six months before. [CC #3, 4]
A note on the issue of editorial value
When in 2006 I was being pushed to get through a lot of QC’ing transcripts, I did feel something of the minor vexation, that some of us editors felt even in 2003, of being expected to do work that really was so precision-based it could be tedious, and yet having the demands changed on us that made you wonder what management wanted, or being subject to picky little criticisms from management that seemed to show lack of appreciation for the nuts and bolts of what we did, which in many ways followed our mother wit used to meet the clear-enough management demands. [CC #3]
In 2006, the additional issue I found was speed, which seemed to increase as the months went on. Here, what is curious is a little complex, but not hard to understand. Whether or not the upper echelon of MBS/Vox that needed the transcripts could directly benefit from the precision we QC’ers followed—and Sqodox, for one, who had been involved in some of the “analytical” meetings whose work was derived from the transcripts in 2002 or so, could appreciate how the values there were different from ours—QC’ing actually gave value for effort, no matter how you sliced it. Because it was cleaning-up and precision-oriented, the work we turned out met some standards of quality—which the upper echelon had to have, because clearly—as was a bedrock way MBS/Vox operated—the division could never use a transcript that wasn’t QC’ed in some way by someone.
Moreover, unlike in other divisions where some system was in place to allow bills to Big Pharma clients to be padded—where you could sit idle for most of the day yet somehow have to provide your own recordkeeping grounds for the placement agency to bill for most of that time [see my June 19 and second July 9 blog entries]—at MBS/Vox, there was usually no way to pad bills at the QC’ing level. The reason was simple: if a transcript was to be fixed and it took two hours to do it, how could you then bill (i.e., despite whatever paths of billing “above you” were set up, either GLG billing MBS/Vox or MBS/Vox billing the Big Pharma client) for four hours when you, the QC’er, could do another transcript (or two) the rest of the day, at maybe two hours a piece? It would seem to me that the only area in the division’s work where there might be systematic padding would be on the upper-echelon, analyze-the-transcripts level. And on this latter matter, I am merely speculating, because I never directly took part in that.
It is not speculating at all to say that if transcripts are pushed through more quickly in late 2006, there is even less chance to “pad bills”—on MBS/Vox’s part to the Big Pharma client—when the number of transcripts to time increases. Plus, if the transcripts get more erratic as a result of pushing through work, that also undercuts quality, and presumably undercuts the ability to justify a high bill.
So it was one thing to say that MBS/Vox was pushing through work at the end of a budget year because it didn’t have much in its cash on hand for paying for transcript QC’ing. But when we see that then MBS/Vox delayed paying for this quality-heavy work for several months, as became clear in 2007 after my work there was done, we have a different kettle of fish. And then it isn’t hard to speculate (even later) that, with the quality-dependent QC’ing done, MBS/Vox could sit on paying for this work while, first, it tried to bill its client for the work when the time came for that. [CC #3, 4] Compare this with my story of GLG’s breakdown (first July 9 blog entry), and I leave it up to you to say how justified I became to have a dimmer view of CommonHealth.
Actually, in 2007 I was still giving them the benefit of the doubt; and especially in 2007, I looked at the firm in Berkeley Heights as the big monster that was primarily behind my own delayed GLG pay. But for his part, in February 2007, “Gary
I would work for CommonHealth later in 2007 and again in 2008. It would be my experience in 2010 that would allow me to answer more fully “Gary
