The 4-day week has landed

And so has the 10-hour day!
I don't know whether to laugh, screem, jump up and down (with rage), or forever regret where i went wrong in life.

Comms
My job revolves around the communications field. No, i don't work in IT, but i do work up to my neck in it. I get up at 03:30hrs, get to work an hour BEFORE i'm scheduled to do so, so as to get on top of the work, err, so to speak, and then basically work me socks off, until 15:30hrs!

I suppose now is the time to drop the bombshell. I'm not a web designer. Ok, so what if you already knew that. I never wanted to be a postman all me life anyway. It was only ever meant to last a little while until i was able to take up something more useful later on down the road.

Royal Mail
&
Communication Workers Union (CWU)

Postman's knock
When i first became a postman i wanted to be the best postman in London. In fact, there is i believe a 'Best Postman/Postwoman of the Year' competition. After about 12 years i kind of gave up wanting to be the best - i just wanted to be home as early as possible. Of course things were different back then in the class of 1988. We did two deliveries, and folks mostly got their mail in the morning before leaving for work.

Royal Mail

Royal Fail
I'm not altogether sure if there is one thing that has caused Royal Mail in my mind to have failed its workers, and now it seems, also its customers.

First mistake : Giving up the 09:15 / 09:30 last letter delivery, and replacing it with a single daily delivery with a last letter delivery of 13:30 (5-day week) was probably the first time that our customers really looked up and took notice at what Royal Mail was doing. Now, i'm not saying that we should go back to doing two deliveries a day, but Royal Mail should be thinking how can it service ALL of its customers more adequately. The introduction of the 5-day week also denies all of our customers a regular post person. Our customers may have no idea who is actually delivering their mail.

Second mistake : Laying down the onus on the customer to pick up the tab for under charged items of mail. To me, this seems to be some kind of scam that you would expect to read about on the internet. The onus should be on the sender. They, at least should have an idea what particular item of addressed mail hasn't got the right amount of postage on it. The customer on the other hand has no idea what the item of mail or junk mail is that they are supposed to be collecting.

Third mistake : Introduction of the Prep 2000 Sorting Frame. On paper it gave us the edge to get out of the office more quickly - it also gave Royal Mail an excuse to increase our workloads. It dosn't matter to our customers what type of mail room equipment is used in order to complete our duties. The problem associated with this type of sorting frame have probably been known for years, yet Royal Mail seem to be indifferent to most of our (posties) concerns regarding this sorting frame.

Household Deliveries

Spam, spam, and more spam!
There is so much unneccessary items of advertising material being shoved under our noses these days, and not only taking up our time, but also creating less space for it. But you know something, that unnaddressed leafletting material that we sometimes get shoved through our letter boxes each day is seen by Royal Mail as big, very BIG business, and they would really like to force us posties to shove even more bucket-loads of it through our letter boxes everyday. Now, i'm not saying it's all rubbish, because quite clearly if it wasn't generating any money it wouldn't be big business. In my view, if Royal Mail view this side of the business as more lucrative than its core delivery service then they should employ the extra staff needed to deliver this material. But, then again, there must surely be people out there who, like me view this type of material as another form of spam.

Communication Workers Union

Crap Workers Union
Most post people - like most people in any organisation are conscientious, and worry just like you and me if they feel that they can't service their customers in the best possible way. But there is, unfortunately, always going to be one or two people who don't give a flying fart about the job or the customers that they deliver to.

There was a time when i was almost convinced that Royal Mail couldn't have cared less where it got its staff from. Eons ago, at one time we were vetted, but that of course was when it felt good to be part of the Civil Service, but somewhere along the line it all went horribly wrong. Royal Mail have successfully diluted the service with the same people that were once parking attendants, or, who will soon become one after leaping down a few more rungs.

I'm almost 100% sure that Royal Mail care more in protecting its business customers (leaflet household deliveries) than servicing the wider business community, and the regular consumer out on the street. Actually, it's probably fair to say that they couldn't really care less what most consumers have to say about their business. As long as Royal Mail are able to get their rubbish door to door delivered by an already beleguered postie they - Royal Mail, will still be able to laugh it all off, while poor postie will be the one to feel the sharp end of a customers wrath.

Postman prat
We all make mistakes (from time-to-time), but the postmen and postwomen who have to throw up their work on these relatively new Prep 2000 frames face a potential mis-delivery EVERY day on every walk in every sorting office up and down the whole country day after every day!

Another problem that's never really been highlighted when mistakes or mis-deliveries are mentioned is the amount of incorrectly addressed items by the sender. I have seen so many of these that they easily outway the mistakes made by any post person. How do i know this? After almost two years of getting used to double-checking names against an address you get to recognise who lives where. There is also the post code of course. But, i guess this sort of problem will always go on unnoticed, maybe because it is easier for people to think it unlikely that such a thing can happen. So, is this just human error, or more worringly machine error?

Identity theft
More and more people are aware of the dangers of simply throwing away their crumpled old invoices with the rest of the houshold rubbish, and it's quite normal to be thinking of buying a small, but effective paper shredder for all of those statements that display our account numbers in full.

Identity theft isn't neccessarily going to result from a mis-delivery, mainly because this type of crime (the identity theft, not the mis-delivery) is the result of stolen bulk mail. But, then again, if an incorrectly addressed, or mis-delivered item of mail lands in your hallway what do you do? Well, most people return it through the post, but others may not have the time to be so concerned to do even this, and it may eventually get posted back through the system - about a couple of days, weeks, months or, err, even years later. More worringly, these items of incorrectly addressed, or mis-delivered items may get thrown into the rubbish.

If some post people continue to look no further than the number, then we are all going to be in the sh*t. It doesn't look like we'll ever be going back to the old pidgeon-hole type of sorting frames. It was very easy to cut out any potential mistakes. As i've mentioned above, those Prep 2000 sorting frames contains a slot for every number 14 of every private house, flat, street, avenue, road and garden path that you can think of. So, if you live at 1 to 99, or 2 to 98 you can be sure that there is a slot for maybe every one of those numbers, but for a different address of course.

I don't particularly trust Royal Mail. They just want us to deliver as much as possible within an impossible time frame, and if we are made to struggle inorder to get finnished on time, chances are, not only is this a potential health hazard, but we will again be taking on our shoulders the blame that should be directed at their doorstep for decreasing the amount of time to realistically do our jobs. Simply glancing down at a number for a fraction of a second will not do.

Communication skills

Strike action
How is it possible that a recognised union the size of the CWU, or Communication Workers Union were totally ignored by that behemoth we call Royal Mail. Can't be very good a communicating, can they. Anyway, i don't want to go on strike if i can help it.

I don't want to ever mention this sh*t ever again. I've never really liked the way Royal Mail treated its workers in the past, and now, it seems that our customers are being given the same kind of inconsideration. Come to think about it, i'm not all that keen about that other lot either, the Communication Workers Union, at a local level anyhow. Nationally, the UCW are quite upset that Royal Mail can just impose a pay increase without the allowing our union in on the deal.

The funny thing is though, nationally, we're all supposed to be aiming for a 35-hour week, and yet our union - locally have rushed in this freaking 10-hour day, 4-day week rubbish. No ballot, just a counting of hands there and then on the same day of the meeting, not counting of course those who weren't there. So, basically, it's alright for our union to impose their will on us locally, but not alright for Royal Mail to impose their will on us nationally.

Apart from stabbing some workers in the back over issues of early voluntary retirement and driving duties, i can see this as becoming a raging success, only of course if you're young, fit, and don't really care how bad your health is going to be further down the road. Hell, why not just offer us a 16-hour day, and 1-day a week duty. I'll vote for that any day of the week. Yay!

You can probably tell that i never wanted this freaking 4-day week in the first place. I actually voted against it! Well, me and this other fellow. But that was before we found out what a load of old bollix that it really turned out to be for everyone.

I'm typing this on one of my two days off. The next day i'll be trying to catch up with all my sleep that i missed working those extra hours.

Personally, and in part due to my dvt, i think i'd much prefer to do a 7-hour day, 5-day week duty, and in that way i think i will have a much longer and enjoyable life. Someone get me out of here already!

The End