Is being a postman really a dream job?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/yoursay ... _dream_job_/

BEING a postman is a funny old job. It’s one of those roles that workers tied to their desks and those wanting to escape the rat race dream of having.

Ask anyone who is wanting a radical change of direction in the employment stakes and being postie is probably top of the list, just above running a holding on a remote Scottish island and having a flock of strange looking sheep.

The thoughts of the disaffected run something like this. A postman (or woman, of course) is one of society’s favourite people. You stroll around the streets and lanes, chatting gaily to people in between popping letters through doors.

Everyone greets you in a friendly fashion, tots love the sweets you hand over, the sun shines, the birds sing and you knock off in the middle of the afternoon.

However such idyllic thoughts have been rudely interrupted with the row that has flared up over posties not walking fast enough.

The Communication Works Union who looks after the brothers (and sisters) said last week that delivery staff are being told to walk at 4mph to meet targets.

So suddenly the ‘stroll’ is going to turn into a sweaty old business. However does being a postie actually measure up to the dreams?

Well perhaps I can help because it’s one of the jobs I have done in my time.

Others include pea picking when I lived in East Anglia, working in a hotel kitchen (admittedly that only lasted a week; I hated it) and working on a farm in Yorkshire. The latter was hard work but great fun.

It was in the early Sixties. Part of the work involved riding on a rickety old trailer, catching bales of hay spewing out of a baling machine, stacking them on a sledge and then operating a lever to release the neat pile. We later collected these and built a haystack in the corner of the field.

After the harvest was over we filled hessian sacks with grain from a shoot and carried or dragged them into the storehouse. Any down-time was taken up with scything thistles in the fields and cleaning out the grain funnels which we dropped into from the top.

I don’t think Health & Safety lets you do that now!

Anyway, I worked as a postie in a little Staffordshire town in 1966 for a few months through the Christmas period. So let me set the record straight for the dreamers.

I started at 5am picking up my round from the sorting office then heading off into the pitch black.

What invariably followed was a trail of stiff, snappy letterboxes that tried to have your fingers off, gates with catches that didn’t work properly, yapping dogs that frightened the life out of you, freezing cold, pouring rain, steep drives and abusive kids.

Added to that was the fact that nagging away in the back of your mind was a rollocking waiting for you if you didn’t get back to the sorting office by a certain time.

Still want to be a postie?

And, more importantly, can you walk fast enough?

[DGP1]

Anyway, I worked as a postie in a little Staffordshire town in 1966 for a few months through the Christmas period. So let me set the record straight for the dreamers.

I started at 5am picking up my round from the sorting office then heading off into the pitch black.

What invariably followed was a trail of stiff, snappy letterboxes that tried to have your fingers off, gates with catches that didn’t work properly, yapping dogs that frightened the life out of you, freezing cold, pouring rain, steep drives and abusive kids.

Added to that was the fact that nagging away in the back of your mind was a rollocking waiting for you if you didn’t get back to the sorting office by a certain time.

Nothing has changed in the past 40 years except that we now get out later