Royal Mail Strike - Quick Question?

[Brats]

Training is most certainly needed, since, until you are shown where doors are, and where roads are, you won't have a clue where you are going.

Chris said that the postie had dumped letters through his door that were intended for others on his street. If the postie knows where number 1 of the street is, is it that hard to find numbers 6, 12 and 15? I can understand you might need to be shown where the route is, but the postie found the street, so this doesn't seem like a technical training issue to me.

Even if it was a wierd street where number 6 isn't where you would normally find it, surely any decent person would knock on a door and ask? Which is why I mention ethics. If you train people on how to behave ethhically, then it should matter so much if they end up in a street they don't know.

Also dyslexia doesn't mean they couldn't do this job. We employ people with dyslexia. They are the best at checking documents for grammatical mistakes, because they concentrate on each word and notice immediately if something is out of place, whereas most people don't see simple mistakes because their brain corrects it for them.

Reading is a tad essential though.

[Jebus]

I've delivered to streets where the numbers make NO sense. Flats where the address is both "Flat 2" AND "Flat D" (work that out, I can't, there's no logical reason it can be those both, but it is). There's roads that have a number 13, there's roads that don't. There's roads that don't have numbers on the door, so you assume it's a certain number, only to find out the next house is the number you were looking for and that there is a random "xx-A" address in there somewhere because someone has sold some of their land and had an extra house built. Housing estates where the addresses go 10-A, 10-D, 10-B, 10-E, 10-C. Housing estates where one letterbox services both number 5 and number 17...again, how does that make sense?

So yeah, if the posty has NO idea of the area, he would need showing the area. Royal Mail, as part of a "way forward" agreement, PROMISED every posty would get training on everything they needed. This has never been realised as most managers can't be bothered, or are more interested in saving the money that would be spent on it.

Moreover, the new breed of posties are 20 hour contract posties who ONLY deliver the mail, they don't sort it, the first time they see it is when they are delivering it. They might not realise that the mail was for the whole street, on a quiet day a bundle of mail for a whole street could be the same size as a bundle of mail for one person on a busy day. These are the new breed of posties we're fighting to stop Royal Mail taking on, it's important that you prepare the mail yourself so this kind of thing never happens.

Oh and no, I don't think most people would knock and ask, the English are a wonderfully reserved bunch, not wanting to be embarrassed. How would you feel knocking on a strangers door and saying "Sorry love, I don't know how to do my job, any chance you can help me?". That's not "ethics" in any way shape or form, it's human nature.

I'm tired, and I'm not in the mood to defend the entire workforce. When a single posty ****s up, people act like we're all criminal c*nts who have no ethics and can't be bothered. Every industry has people like that, doesn't mean everyone should be tarred with the same brush. The amount of f*cking idiots who post things with a completely incorrect address, but it still gets there, do they get mentioned? Do the posties involved get praised? No. I'm gonna stop there, because, as I said...I'm tired and don't want to start ranting any more than I have.

[stevie vip 99]

I too work for Royal Mail and there are some right ****wits working there!!
Once they are in though there's no getting rid of them, big company with a big union i'm afraid, smaller companys can just get rid of the deadwood but union still has a big say at Royal Mail.

We're treated like crap most the time by our company and sometimes by the public(not all).

Cuts after cuts giving us little chance to do our job properly, believe it or not most of us just wanna do a good job still.

[stevie vip 99]

I agree with Jebus, house numbers, road names, flat names are all over the place these days especially on new trendy builds!!!

Where i work there's numerous buildings of the same name with no numbers or letterboxes!! Trendy new buildings don't like letterboxes as it ruins their nice designs!!!

[Jebus]

I should point out by the way, stevie is right, there are some total numpties in royal mail as well. My wife works in a place she looks after people with mental health problems, and some of the people at my work would be right at home there.

Moreover, I've never worked in an industry where such outrageous homophobic and racist bull**** is tolerated not only by the other staff, but the management and the union ignore it as well. One of the first things I ever heard a colleague say on my first day was a racist remark at the radio!

So yeah, I just didn't want to paint a picture we're whiter than white, because like every large company, we have our ****heads too. At the office I work at though, 99% of us just want to do our job, and do it well, but the obscene cuts that RM are enforcing (they are ignoring the CWU almost completely now) are making that harder and harder.

Oh and get used to 4pm deliveries wholesale, if the next wave of changes comes through (which it will) we won't even be allowed out of the office to deliver anything til 10am at the earliest, the deliveries are 4 hours average, and that's if you are a quick posty, the people who finish at 2-4pm now will be even later still.

We're in a rock and a hard place at times, flouncing health and safety regulations to get the job done, because if we don't, we have our managers threatening to test us and if we fail, we get put in disciplinary then eventually sacked. The union are so weak now it's a joke, hence why people carry overweight bags, speed in vans and basically break every rule going just to get the job done on time, so as to (ironically) actually keep their own job. Honestly, in recent years it's felt like working in the dark ages where you have no rights whatsoever.

On a lighter note, a favourite road ****up of mine is a road where it goes exactly like this : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 25 24 23 23 21 20 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19. Not really that bad, but I just thinking about the people who built them, and how much crack they were smoking when they numbered them.

[ChrisF]

Would love to say my road had complicated numbers. But it doesn't. I'm #21. My neighbours are 23, 25 etc... There's no fancy numbering. All the houses he failed to deliver to were sequentially after mine, and all on the same side of the road.

Didn't mean to get into a heated debate btw... I just wanted to vent somewhat at having to do someone else's job (and without pay!)

[Jebus]

To be honest Chris, it sounds like it was a quiet day and he thought it was all your mail.

Mondays and tuesdays are almost always quiet days, the mail you'd get for a 20-30 house street could be the same as the mail for 1 house on a friday.

Either that or he's simply a numpty.

For the record, you didn't have to deilver it mate, and you shouldn't have. Numerous reasons but most importantly, if you don't raise the issue, the posty probably won't know he's done it, and therefore he can do it again.

You cannot improve a service unless you flag it up when you get a poor one!

[Brats]

Oh and no, I don't think most people would knock and ask, the English are a wonderfully reserved bunch, not wanting to be embarrassed. How would you feel knocking on a strangers door and saying "Sorry love, I don't know how to do my job, any chance you can help me?". That's not "ethics" in any way shape or form, it's human nature.

I would definately knock, especially if the option was either that or not delivering the mail. Okay, so you're admitting you don't know the route, but as well as the English being reserved, most of us are pretty good and helping out those who ask for it.

Just sticking the stuff through someone else's door would never be an option.

And I'm not having a go at posties. Our postie is great and I buy him a small pressie every Christmas for handling all the crap I order through the mail during the year. It's just that my job is training and I get equally cheesed off when people quickly label an issue as a training defecit, when sometimes it's more about the person than what they have been taught (which seems to be the case in Chris' example).

[Papercut]

I just stick em back in the post box.

[stevie vip 99]

They're not trained, that's the problem. Given a bag and asked to go out and have a go

[Brats]

But it wasn''t the problem in this case.

[Jebus]

It's just that my job is training and I get equally cheesed off when people quickly label an issue as a training defecit, when sometimes it's more about the person than what they have been taught (which seems to be the case in Chris' example).

It could be the case, yes, but it could just so easily be the case that the person who trained this posty didn't do it properly. I train some new posties (have done for 7 years) and I pride myself that I leave them capable of doing the job, however, I've seen others train new recruits and leave them absolutely clueless. That IS an ethics issues, but not one from the new recruits. Some of the office coaches (RM jargon for trainer) leave the new recruits so scared and clueless, it's frightening.

But it wasn''t the problem in this case.

I must have missed something, because I've not seen any evidence to show that.

[Brats]

Yes there is:

Would love to say my road had complicated numbers. But it doesn't. I'm #21. My neighbours are 23, 25 etc... There's no fancy numbering. All the houses he failed to deliver to were sequentially after mine, and all on the same side of the road.

In this example, the failure to deliver the post to the correct address is not a training issue. It could well be that this person has received no training (I'm not disputing that), but that's not the reason the post was delivered incorrectly. No-one needs any training to know that 23 follows 21, etc.

It's either an ethical or competence issue. I totally agree that posties (along with everyone else) should be properly trained, but I cannot see how a lack of training caused this to happen in this specific example.

What time is dinner ready? I'm starving!

[Jebus]

It's totally a training issue! He's obviously put 3 houses worth of mail through one door because its the end of a bundle! If he was trained properly he would know that come whatever may, you check EVERY letter before delivery whilst walking up a drive/path etc.

You might be a trainer by trade but that doesn't mean you know the ins and outs of training every soul on the planet mate. What Chris has described is one of the most common errors by someone who hasn't been trained to check the mail properly.

I don't think you quite grasp the mechanics of delivery, and how we do it, but that's not exactly your fault and I can totally understand why you'd vehemently deny it being a possible training issue that has caused it, when (from experience) it's almost certainly just that.

The cause of mis-delivery isn't because he doesn't know that 23 follows 21, he's done it because it's the end of a bundle of mail, or he's picked up a bundle from within a bundle (when you deliver a few houses on the trot without moving your bike you do that) and not checked it when delivering...he's ASSUMED that all that mail is for 21, and hasn't been told that the procedure is to always check the letters/flats individually before you put them through the door, even if you sorted it yourself and you think you are the hottest sorter going, it's is recognised, official procedure to do this.

This is a really really REALLY common cause of complaint, people are in a rush so assume that they've correctly picked up the mail for only one house (or similar) and they've not, this is a training issue because the person who trained them didn't do it either!

[Shez]

You can tell Jebus takes pride in his work, and I feel for guys like him who feel the need to defend the entire postal service.

But there is little doubt in my mind that the royal mail has a high percentage of workers who do indeed do the bare minimum, and even make a mess of that.

For example all you people backslapping your postman for leaving parcels in rabbit hutches and such things, and/or letting your neighbours sign for a recorded delivery are actually applauding slackness.

You wont be so happy when something goes missing (and it will) and neither will your posty who is doing the exact opposite of what he has been trained to do.

Misdeliveries are common place, I suspect in Chris's case, some nab of a postman has been getting towards the end of his time, and thought fk this i'm off back to the office - Here take this lot Mr Field.