The Revision... Four Days In.

[Ramone2309]

Well, it's been four days now and the chaos within continues. On the previous Sunday, Romec/ Management and a few paid voulnteers re fitted the office and began some of the IPS, ready for Monday.
Day One, The office was in a chaotic mess. Yorkies full of mail everywhere, a new Opal ( all the walks have been reallocated new numbers or been removed completely, as a whole) and an IPS configured numerically to suit the "porters", which now run in-order of "looped" walks as opposed to 1-10,11-23 etc..they now resemble a bingo card. The aisles between the two office IPS, which are designated "No-Man's land" so the porters can replenish the trays was full of York's, oh and both of the porters were either absent or put on a different duty.Monday, had a light snow fall by national standards. The order of the day was 1st Class and packets only and the banning the use of HCT's. Personally, I used a light weight trolley and took what I could. EVERYONE took their first 20 minute break "in-House" and came back to the office at 1.25pm . Day two - same again.

Day Three, the use of HCT's was allowed and so the deployment of 3 days worth of mail and packets began - None of the HCT routes have designated bag replenishment points or toilet stops, so working how much to take out in 'one go' was near impossible. Even if you could, you cannot fit an entire walk in an HCT and for Health & Safety purposes, it would be beyond dangerous, especially on roads with inclines and parked cars. People who'd never used the HCT on delivery and even looped van sharers were bringing back full bags of mail at their 'cut off' times. The boss let most of the staff slide as we are naturally experiencing some bedding in problems. But he did use the opportunity to not only accuse some posties as being 'awkward deliberately' but managed to bring a grown man already frustrated with the job, to tears. After three days..and he'd been off for one of those !

It's going to take MONTHS for this revision to work properly, for people to learn the new IPS and for the others to learn the THREE walks they are expected to throw in, the back log of mail already building up and HCT routes to be sorted out.. I've worked in Royal Mail since 1995, I've seen many changes and many revisions, but this is by far the worst thought out and most falsely ambitious one to date. Moral and people's tolerance is already at an all time low - and it's only a matter of time before the tables will turn and management begin to accuse the staff of not making it work. It's already started to happen in some aspects, after three days!! Sadly some of the work force are already coming in early and skipping their meal relief to help clear their mail and get the job done.

My walk is down as being 4:08 hours with SEVEN packets !!! I had two packet bags today and added to the three others..that's some figure to compare too. The HCT is not going to work on hills and the mail is ridiculous.. Nice one Moya :D

More to come..today's my day off !

[fng]

Dont worry about it all, one simple thing that helped me thru revision was learning and accepting from the start that :
whatever went wrong was staff fault not the planners or management.
The planners are always right.
Management are always right.
If the loops are wrong(which they cant be) then it is because someone from the council has moved the road since the planners did their job.
Staff are the awkward ones not the planners
Staff are the awkward ones not the managers.
You are lucky to have a job.
if you are out delivering late it is because you are not fast enough as the planners have planned it correctly
If you are back early, you quite clearly cheated and or cut corners as the planners have planned it correctly

The sooner you come to terms with the above the less stress you will have......

[Judgee]

Our revision is well over a year in now... and it's still not working!

Good luck with it!

[dre33dd]

7 months in and ours is still working nicely....its all in the planning.make sure area rep is heavily involved...question everything!!!
if its wrong now then use the pir period to get it sorted...

[Captain Scarlet]

Nearly 3 yrs and some walks still leave mail every day....walks are too big some too small office is a sh*t tip most of the morning and can,t get in some days for yorks, so best get it looked at pronto

[Postie45]

how much longer have you found it to deliver using a HCT compared to over the shoulder pouches ? I can imagine it taking me about 25% longer to get around using one of those things !

[BingBong]

Well, it's been four days now and the chaos within continues. On the previous Sunday, Romec/ Management and a few paid voulnteers re fitted the office and began some of the IPS, ready for Monday.
Day One, The office was in a chaotic mess. Yorkies full of mail everywhere, a new Opal ( all the walks have been reallocated new numbers or been removed completely, as a whole) and an IPS configured numerically to suit the "porters", which now run in-order of "looped" walks as opposed to 1-10,11-23 etc..they now resemble a bingo card. The aisles between the two office IPS, which are designated "No-Man's land" so the porters can replenish the trays was full of York's, oh and both of the porters were either absent or put on a different duty.Monday, had a light snow fall by national standards. The order of the day was 1st Class and packets only and the banning the use of HCT's. Personally, I used a light weight trolley and took what I could. EVERYONE took their first 20 minute break "in-House" and came back to the office at 1.25pm . Day two - same again.

Day Three, the use of HCT's was allowed and so the deployment of 3 days worth of mail and packets began - None of the HCT routes have designated bag replenishment points or toilet stops, so working how much to take out in 'one go' was near impossible. Even if you could, you cannot fit an entire walk in an HCT and for Health & Safety purposes, it would be beyond dangerous, especially on roads with inclines and parked cars. People who'd never used the HCT on delivery and even looped van sharers were bringing back full bags of mail at their 'cut off' times. The boss let most of the staff slide as we are naturally experiencing some bedding in problems. But he did use the opportunity to not only accuse some posties as being 'awkward deliberately' but managed to bring a grown man already frustrated with the job, to tears. After three days..and he'd been off for one of those !

It's going to take MONTHS for this revision to work properly, for people to learn the new IPS and for the others to learn the THREE walks they are expected to throw in, the back log of mail already building up and HCT routes to be sorted out.. I've worked in Royal Mail since 1995, I've seen many changes and many revisions, but this is by far the worst thought out and most falsely ambitious one to date. Moral and people's tolerance is already at an all time low - and it's only a matter of time before the tables will turn and management begin to accuse the staff of not making it work. It's already started to happen in some aspects, after three days!! Sadly some of the work force are already coming in early and skipping their meal relief to help clear their mail and get the job done.

My walk is down as being 4:08 hours with SEVEN packets !!! I had two packet bags today and added to the three others..that's some figure to compare too. The HCT is not going to work on hills and the mail is ridiculous.. Nice one Moya :D

More to come..today's my day off !

We've not had a revision yet, but things are being put in place so that the revision slips on "without issues" however these minor new things are already becoming a huge problem. Im quite a calm guy but lately I find myself backs to the wall and windmilling my way out. One for all and all for one.

[Ramone2309]

Day Six ( day off Friday). We had.... a snow day !! Which, our manager must of seen as a small God send. ALL deliveries were suspended, despite there only being about 2 1/2 inches of soft snow about. We stopped in and sorted in the region of 176 trays of mail and each received around FOUR packet bags . The office is now clear of IPS and mail-sort 'til Monday. But we have be warned that we MUST take out the previous weeks and this weeks D2D . Although I'm not sure if it includes the Royal Mail D2D informing people of the upcoming disruption to their service whilst the office goes into a state of upheaval ..a week a go!

To answer a colleagues earlier question regarding the HCT's over Red Shoulder Pouch deliveries. The HCT may be more practical, from a Royal Mail point of view ( they save on drop boxes , bag drops and paying people to store bags) from a Postie's point of view, they are a major time consuming and ineffective method of delivery. With the red shoulder bags and even the light weight trolleys, you can maintain a certain momentum whilst posting. You'd hold a bundle in one hand, sift through it, walk up the path, post the item, move on..sift through the mail, move on, get to the door,lift a package out of your bag knock..etc..But all this could be in a fairly natural and flowing motion. With the HCT's it's a totally opposite experience..a horrible one.

You have to push a almost fully loaded bulky box up kerbs, between pedestrians, in between parked cars 'til you reach your first delivery point. Once you reach it, removing ONE bundle doesn't even make a dent in the weight of the trolley !You then have to apply the brakes, flick through the mail. If you have a parcel , you have to take out the keys, walk to the front of the trolley, unlock the trolley, find the parcel, relock the trolley,put away the keys.. knock..no answer ? Write out a 739 card.. knock next door..no answer, put 739 card into original house..remove keys, go to front of trolley, unlock trolley, replace item away from other packets, relock the trolley, put away keys, take off the brakes of the HCT and push a fully loaded trolley to the next house...Yes, I'd say it was taking about a 3rd if not more time than a red pouch, when you consider you carry a fraction of the weight in one bag and that the weight decreases immediately you begin and you can maintain a speed that you'd normally walk at with.

So Monday's going to be fun with a fully loaded fitting and four packet bags...minimum!

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

Day Six ( day off Friday). With the red shoulder bags and even the light weight trolleys, you can maintain a certain momentum whilst posting. You'd hold a bundle in one hand, sift through it, walk up the path, post the item, move on..sift through the mail, move on, get to the door,lift a package out of your bag knock..etc..

Maybe it is the way you wrote it, but it comes across that you are filtering the bundle for the next address' mail while ont he move. It is supposed to be filtered while standing outside the previous address' delivery point, in case you missed the final bit on mail for the address you are still standing outside of, but also so you can focus on walking safely to the next delivery point.

...Another common time saver that makes walks seem more achieveable than they are, yet sadly as a result of performance issue pressure or just simple keeness to finish quicker, very few OPGs do this properly at our gaff at least. Each bit of mail for the next address is going to take ~0.5 second to filter accurately, so if you have a walk with 800 delivery points with 5 bits of mail per DP on average, that is something like 2000 seconds or 33mins alone before talking about anything else that uses time on delivery... Which makes you wonder why there are walks with 800 addresses out there, even if the call rate was 80% that is still 640 places to filter mail for.

[Postie45]

Thanks for the info regarding how long it takes to use a HCT over a pouch !

...Another common time saver that makes walks seem more achieveable than they are, yet sadly as a result of performance issue pressure or just simple keeness to finish quicker, very few OPGs do this properly at our gaff at least. Each bit of mail for the next address is going to take ~0.5 second to filter accurately, so if you have a walk with 800 delivery points with 5 bits of mail per DP on average, that is something like 20000 seconds or 5.5 hours alone before talking about anything else that uses time on delivery... Which makes you wonder why there are walks with 800 addresses out there, even if the call rate was 80% that is still 640 places to filter mail for. :cuppa

I make it 2000 seconds thats with 4000 items x 0.5 second per item, approx 33 mins.

You do raise a good point about how we tend to do a lot of things to get the job done quicker, I dont think management really accounts for how much time we save them by taking shortcuts which wont be possible when using a HCT which is probably the cause of most problems of people cutting off across the country.

[fishtank]

I dont think management really accounts for how much time we save them by taking shortcuts.

I think they totally account for it,in fact they piss themselves laughing at our continued stupidity.
Even when they give us the perfect weapon to save jobs like an HCT what do we do?
We moan about how long it takes,chain it to a lamp post and off we go on our merry short cutting,job cutting way again.
Lambs to the slaughter us...dumb-assed lambs at that.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

Thanks for the info regarding how long it takes to use a HCT over a pouch !

...Another common time saver that makes walks seem more achieveable than they are, yet sadly as a result of performance issue pressure or just simple keeness to finish quicker, very few OPGs do this properly at our gaff at least. Each bit of mail for the next address is going to take ~0.5 second to filter accurately, so if you have a walk with 800 delivery points with 5 bits of mail per DP on average, that is something like 20000 seconds or 5.5 hours alone before talking about anything else that uses time on delivery... Which makes you wonder why there are walks with 800 addresses out there, even if the call rate was 80% that is still 640 places to filter mail for.

I make it 2000 seconds thats with 4000 items x 0.5 second per item, approx 33 mins.

You do raise a good point about how we tend to do a lot of things to get the job done quicker, I dont think management really accounts for how much time we save them by taking shortcuts which wont be possible when using a HCT which is probably the cause of most problems of people cutting off across the country.

Oops, failed my maths test again!