The "How was your day" thread.

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just out bath

isnt everyone off today?

[majeed]

4.00am Got up and ironed blue shirt
4.30am Set off for home on foot
4.50am Arrived at home (I am contracted to live at home for 25 hours a week, but I digress...)
4.52am Singed (signed?) in, got coffee from machine etc.
5.00am Started preparing last week's D2Ds (left by several, other, itinerant posties)
5.30am Completed collating half of D2Ds (to be delivered after my walk, on Saturday; this is how I like to do them)
5.31am Start collating and putting into my walk frame one line of D2Ds for today; also do other stuff, like chat and drink coffee; use toilet again etc.
6.00am Start throwing in walk

(Asked by manager to do IPS - did some for 3/4 hour then went back to solid throwing-in)

11.30am Taken out by manager with nine bags to walk; drop bags at three bag drops (second drop closes at 1pm-2.30pm, so have to factor a dead walk in)
11.45am Deliver first letter
17.15pm Deliver last letter
17.30pm Caught bus
17.50pm Got into the office and am now sat drinking a cuppa and munching away. Back at home at 5.00am tomorrow, with same routine planned. Not fasting because of the dog bite.

- There were numerous issues, but because the preparation was done properly, the walk went very smoothly: there was just lots of mail!

http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/arabic ... /17_14.htm

[Carnoustie]

Thank you for the insight: it's interesting to know why what happens due to changes elsewhere in the pipeline. Not surprisingly, the double-capacity was reflected in the incoming mail profile at our DO. BTW, what is "Mailsort 3"? Forgive my ignorance, but I thought there was only one type of Mailsort... and what is "NHCDC"?

Sorry for the slow reply, majeed

I might have used an outdated phrase when referring to 'Mailsort 3'. We were always told at our training not to use the term 'junk mail' for all the heavily-discounted mail that RM are contractually obliged to deliver 'within 7 days'. It isn't 1st class, or 2nd class, but we shouldn't refer to it as 3rd class mail either, as that implies some inferior service to the other 2 products.
You would recognise Mailsort 3 items by the big M logo where one would normally see a printed 1 or 2. Some customers, like Sky, are willing to pay a higher price-per-item for the Mailsort 2 product, hence making their items indistinguishable from normal 2nd Class mail.

I think that over the years, the phrase 'Mailsort' has - in delivery offices - been used to refer solely to items with the M logo, when in fact items can be 1st or 2nd Class and still in fact be a Mailsort product !

NHCDC is one of an ever-shrinking number of Regional Distribution Centres (RDCs), of which several have been closed in recent years. We were set up to collect, sort, and distribute (to mail centres) the large-volume business postings. The NHCDC bit stands for Northern Home Counties Distribution Centre, by the way.

Opening up the bulk mailings to competition makes us the most vulnerable part of Royal Mail, because when DHL or TNT (or others) pick up work that we previously had contracts for, they are in effect completely by-passing us and delivering "our" work straight to the mail centres. For each lorry-load they carry, you can probably assume that means 1 RM driver has no collection duty at the RDC that used to collect it. The knock-on effect of losing that work is the staff indoors at that RDC have less work, meaning possible duty cuts / loss of overtime or, as is happening right now, 20 Voluntary redundancies. And the lost work, once sorted, would have been conveyed to Inward mail centres and other RDC's, so there's potentially other driving duties vulnerable to cuts whenever another collection is lost to competitors.

Try not to get too upset at heavy days on deliveries, guys. As long as RM's big customers keep sending out the same volume of mail, your jobs are relatively secure. It makes no difference if you get 10% DSA mail* + 90% RM-only mail in your workload, or whether none of it is DSA mail (*mail picked up by our competitors). You've still got plenty of work coming in, irrespective of whether RM, TNT, DHL etc has collected the work from the original customer.

But every time RM lose a bulk-posting contract to our competitors, it makes us guys in the RDC's more likely to suffer cuts in indoor jobs and / or driving duties

[majeed]

Thank you for the insight: it's interesting to know why what happens due to changes elsewhere in the pipeline. Not surprisingly, the double-capacity was reflected in the incoming mail profile at our DO. BTW, what is "Mailsort 3"? Forgive my ignorance, but I thought there was only one type of Mailsort... and what is "NHCDC"?

Sorry for the slow reply, majeed

I might have used an outdated phrase when referring to 'Mailsort 3'. We were always told at our training not to use the term 'junk mail' for all the heavily-discounted mail that RM are contractually obliged to deliver 'within 7 days'. It isn't 1st class, or 2nd class, but we shouldn't refer to it as 3rd class mail either, as that implies some inferior service to the other 2 products.
You would recognise Mailsort 3 items by the big M logo where one would normally see a printed 1 or 2. Some customers, like Sky, are willing to pay a higher price-per-item for the Mailsort 2 product, hence making their items indistinguishable from normal 2nd Class mail.

I think that over the years, the phrase 'Mailsort' has - in delivery offices - been used to refer solely to items with the M logo, when in fact items can be 1st or 2nd Class and still in fact be a Mailsort product !

NHCDC is one of an ever-shrinking number of Regional Distribution Centres (RDCs), of which several have been closed in recent years. We were set up to collect, sort, and distribute (to mail centres) the large-volume business postings. The NHCDC bit stands for Northern Home Counties Distribution Centre, by the way.

Opening up the bulk mailings to competition makes us the most vulnerable part of Royal Mail, because when DHL or TNT (or others) pick up work that we previously had contracts for, they are in effect completely by-passing us and delivering "our" work straight to the mail centres. For each lorry-load they carry, you can probably assume that means 1 RM driver has no collection duty at the RDC that used to collect it. The knock-on effect of losing that work is the staff indoors at that RDC have less work, meaning possible duty cuts / loss of overtime or, as is happening right now, 20 Voluntary redundancies. And the lost work, once sorted, would have been conveyed to Inward mail centres and other RDC's, so there's potentially other driving duties vulnerable to cuts whenever another collection is lost to competitors.

Try not to get too upset at heavy days on deliveries, guys. As long as RM's big customers keep sending out the same volume of mail, your jobs are relatively secure. It makes no difference if you get 10% DSA mail* + 90% RM-only mail in your workload, or whether none of it is DSA mail (*mail picked up by our competitors). You've still got plenty of work coming in, irrespective of whether RM, TNT, DHL etc has collected the work from the original customer.

But every time RM lose a bulk-posting contract to our competitors, it makes us guys in the RDC's more likely to suffer cuts in indoor jobs and / or driving duties

Thank you kindly for your lucid (and grammatically pleasing) reply.

Well, I suppose there are always job openings with the competitors: a bit of 'swings and roundabouts': they can't get rid of Royal Mail, as it is tied up with half a millennium of legislation, infrastructure and a place in the culture of UK's society, plus you need a daily mail service whether or not people are sending mail, which is a an argument against privatisation and for nationalisation.

Why do they call it "Mailsort"? Is it because it is sorted in bulk at an RDC? How does Mailsort differ from other types of mail that are not "Mailsorted"?

[POSTMAN]

4.00am Got up and ironed blue shirt
4.30am Set off for home on foot
4.50am Arrived at home (I am contracted to live at home for 25 hours a week, but I digress...)
4.52am Singed (signed?) in, got coffee from machine etc.
5.00am Started preparing last week's D2Ds (left by several, other, itinerant posties)
5.30am Completed collating half of D2Ds (to be delivered after my walk, on Saturday; this is how I like to do them)
5.31am Start collating and putting into my walk frame one line of D2Ds for today; also do other stuff, like chat and drink coffee; use toilet again etc.
6.00am Start throwing in walk

(Asked by manager to do IPS - did some for 3/4 hour then went back to solid throwing-in)

11.30am Taken out by manager with nine bags to walk; drop bags at three bag drops (second drop closes at 1pm-2.30pm, so have to factor a dead walk in)
11.45am Deliver first letter
17.15pm Deliver last letter
17.30pm Caught bus
17.50pm Got into the office and am now sat drinking a cuppa and munching away. Back at home at 5.00am tomorrow, with same routine planned. Not fasting because of the dog bite.

- There were numerous issues, but because the preparation was done properly, the walk went very smoothly: there was just lots of mail!

[Carnoustie]

Well, I suppose there are always job openings with the competitors: a bit of 'swings and roundabouts': they can't get rid of Royal Mail, as it is tied up with half a millennium of legislation, infrastructure and a place in the culture of UK's society, plus you need a daily mail service whether or not people are sending mail, which is a an argument against privatisation and for nationalisation.

Why do they call it "Mailsort"? Is it because it is sorted in bulk at an RDC? How does Mailsort differ from other types of mail that are not "Mailsorted"?

I think the explanation for the name 'Mailsort' is that the bulk mailers, in return for a sizeable discount, pre-sort their mailing. Could you imagine the amount of manual handling required if the Sky magazines for say 5million homes were sent in to us with the magazines printed off in an order that was logical to Sky (e.g. account number order) ? One cage of magazines could contain items bearing any number of different postcode areas, from AB to WV or even ZE ! I think to reveal any more of the process could get me in trouble, so you'll have to use your imagination as to how the mail is actually presented to us

You have to bear in mind that the top brass at RM consider the definition of customer very differently from you and I, and indeed the general public. Messrs Leighton & Crozier argue that the customer is the person or company paying us to deliver their mail or mailing, NOT the person or business that receives the individual pieces of mail. Only a tiny proportion of the mail in the system at any given moment is domestic / stamped traffic, except around the Christmas period. The top brass would argue that Royal Mail's role is to provide a daily facility for mail collections for our most important customers, the bulk mailers, and to ensure that we deliver each day to every delivery point for which there are one or more items.

[majeed]

Well, I suppose there are always job openings with the competitors: a bit of 'swings and roundabouts': they can't get rid of Royal Mail, as it is tied up with half a millennium of legislation, infrastructure and a place in the culture of UK's society, plus you need a daily mail service whether or not people are sending mail, which is a an argument against privatisation and for nationalisation.

Why do they call it "Mailsort"? Is it because it is sorted in bulk at an RDC? How does Mailsort differ from other types of mail that are not "Mailsorted"?

I think the explanation for the name 'Mailsort' is that the bulk mailers, in return for a sizeable discount, pre-sort their mailing. Could you imagine the amount of manual handling required if the Sky magazines for say 5million homes were sent in to us with the magazines printed off in an order that was logical to Sky (e.g. account number order) ? One cage of magazines could contain items bearing any number of different postcode areas, from AB to WV or even ZE ! I think to reveal any more of the process could get me in trouble, so you'll have to use your imagination as to how the mail is actually presented to us

You have to bear in mind that the top brass at RM consider the definition of customer very differently from you and I, and indeed the general public. Messrs Leighton & Crozier argue that the customer is the person or company paying us to deliver their mail or mailing, NOT the person or business that receives the individual pieces of mail. Only a tiny proportion of the mail in the system at any given moment is domestic / stamped traffic, except around the Christmas period. The top brass would argue that Royal Mail's role is to provide a daily facility for mail collections for our most important customers, the bulk mailers, and to ensure that we deliver each day to every delivery point for which there are one or more items.

Nuff said. BTW - for some reason, I keep wanting to say your sign-in name, "Cornish Pastie": perhaps it's because I'm stuffing my face right now.

[majeed]

4.00am Got up and ironed blue shirt
4.30am Set off for home on foot
4.50am Arrived at home (I am contracted to live at home for 25 hours a week, but I digress...)
4.52am Singed (signed?) in, got coffee from machine etc.
5.00am Started preparing last week's D2Ds (left by several, other, itinerant posties)
5.30am Completed collating half of D2Ds (to be delivered after my walk, on Saturday; this is how I like to do them)
5.31am Start collating and putting into my walk frame one line of D2Ds for today; also do other stuff, like chat and drink coffee; use toilet again etc.
6.00am Start throwing in walk

(Asked by manager to do IPS - did some for 3/4 hour then went back to solid throwing-in)

11.30am Taken out by manager with nine bags to walk; drop bags at three bag drops (second drop closes at 1pm-2.30pm, so have to factor a dead walk in)
11.45am Deliver first letter
17.15pm Deliver last letter
17.30pm Caught bus
17.50pm Got into the office and am now sat drinking a cuppa and munching away. Back at home at 5.00am tomorrow, with same routine planned. Not fasting because of the dog bite.

- There were numerous issues, but because the preparation was done properly, the walk went very smoothly: there was just lots of mail!

Oooh! Strike a light! Look at Postman's face!

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Last letter 1540

"its a great duty" says the bossman

[TrueBlueTerrier]

WET

[majeed]

..."its a great duty"says the bossman...

It's funny how that patter travels up and down the country: that's what our managers always say and you can almost predict that when they say it, the walk will probably be the most difficult you've ever done. Why else do they ask you to do it?

[majeed]

WET

MARTI PELLOW

[Broxi51]

Dry & sunny first thing. Cloudy by lunchtime but still no rain. Heavy packet day. Was over my time for the second day running. Far too old to be out walking the streets

[WilsonPickett]

last letter 15.00 glad am not alone in finishing late!

[dubdaz]

Last letter 14:00 for a 14:25 cut off,never do overtime,not when the f*****s are doubling my ips so I'm not getting out on delivery till 11:15.Do the job properly and take your 40 minutes meal relief it's the only way.