How slow is too slow??

[flojon]

Ive been a postie for a few months nearly 5, as a RM casual in london. However my prepping is very slow. I work non stop dont stop for breaks but I am always the last postie out of the office, usually between 12 to 1pm, that is after a 6am start, sometimes 630. I know Im not fast at prepping and the guys over 20 years older than me and others near retirement finish hours before me. Well the other casuals are out at least an hour or more before me. The managers usally ask others to help me, which I find a bit humiliating.

Since I am lastout I make sure I do the work as accurately as possible and deliver everything, which means i often finish around 6pm, sometimes earlier. So I am doing a 12 hour shift.Obviously I dont or can not claim overtime.
Also when I go out, some guys, long term staff and casuals the same time as me, sometimes have finished their walk. Because Im slow, I usually accept the awkward shifts and walks and help out whenever asked and far off offices when they are short. I dont think im in a position to say no.

Im begining to wonder am i below the accetable RM standards? Isnt it 3 hours allowed for prepping, and 3.5 hours to do the walk? Will the management be in their rights to terminate me, because Im far slower than the others? Or is accuracy and reliability better than speed?
From a job satisfaction/morale point of view, I dont feel I can join in with the humoour and banter, because I'm slower than everyone else.

Should I do the honourable thing, concede defeat and resign, before Im asked to go? Or am i being too hard on myself? Does anyone know of 'slow' workers similar to me who are still working after many years, or are they usually terminated?

[jockstrapp]

No they are not sacked................THEY ARE MADE MANAGERS .......................

[DGP1]

Some people are not cut out for being a postie, after a few months you should be able to prep and deliver a duty within the duty time unless you're constantly being put onto new duties without any training (and in that case your trainer should be retraining you).

[RTI]

some people take a bit of time to get it rite, but i could imagine it being harder than ever to get the hang of things now. although management blurt on about 10% drop in mail, but i can honestly say that i find it harder now prepping a new walk than i ever used to, its just non stop.
stick with it and hopefully you will see yourself getting a bit quicker.

[NewPostieUK]

First of all, why can't you claim overtime? You work a 12 hour shift? You must be mad.

Secondly, have you been trained on more than one walk? It took me months to get up to speed, and that was just doing one walk. If I'd been trained on other walks sooner, that would have slowed me down a lot. The best way to get quick is to do the same walk day in day out. Maybe you are doing one of the harder walks?

I'm trained up on five walks, and the three that I've done for weeks at a time, I'm reasonably fast at prepping. The other two I've never done more than once a week, and I'm really slow at prepping them. I'm always last out the door, whatever walk I'm on, and I've been there two years now. Mind you a couple who started after me go in really early, that probably explains how they get out so early.

If I was you I'd ask to do the same walk all the time, explaining you think you'll be able to get up to speed that way. Start claiming overtime, and if it gets questioned, or you just don't fancy walking the streets till tea time, explain that you have other commitments and you need to finish at a certain time, what should you do with your undelivered mail?

Are you sure you aren't doing too much? When I started I just copied the person next to me, not knowing he worked more hours than me, so I was trying to do prepping that I wasn't meant to do. Nobody told me, they just let me get on with it.

Is it just prepping you are slow at? Personally, I was, and still am, slow at bagging up. If you are, you could watch someone near you bagging up, and just mention that they did it really quick, have they any tips?

I'm sure you'll get it right in the end.

[EatMyShorts]

First of all, why can't you claim overtime? You work a 12 hour shift? You must be mad.

If he even tried to claim overtime he would be gone. End of

[chunk]

Your definitely being to hard on yourself . You say your going to other offices !
Unfamiliar round+unfamiliar managers & ways of doing things + unfamiliar area .
Hows that going to help you get up speed with your regular round/
or do you have a different round every day?
How are you going to match experienced posties with regular rounds.
Not all rounds are equal some are far harder than others in the same office.
sometimes the new guy gets the shitty jobs!
Try and find out from one of your colleagues (when your given an unfamiliar round) how long the regular takes?
don't ask the manager! hes not about to admit the regular often goes over in case you ask for overtime.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

First of all, why can't you claim overtime? You work a 12 hour shift? You must be mad.

If he even tried to claim overtime he would be gone. End of

Why - please expand. If he works overtime on a duty he has not done before then the OT is put on the training budget, and a decent manager would realise if he is claiming excessive OT then he may be having problems and would either get it sorted or try retraining.

They would not just sack him for claiming OT they would have to follow a set procedure or they would and should fail at an ET/IT.

[OnAFlyer]

If you like the job and are happy to continue working long hours then definitely carry on.

However.....6-7 hours is way too long to prep any walk, regardless of whether you have done it before (I don't care what anyone on here says, it is) - so IMO if you try and claim OT every day you are going to get pulled up for it. As said above maybe retraining could help though but I think you'd be lucky to get that in the present climate.

Do you have any physical problems that cause you to be so slow at prepping? On a walk with 1000 letters if it takes you 5 hours to prep that's 3 letters a minute - one every 20 seconds. Surely you can go quicker than that?

[shadow]

Hi flojon can you tell me how many hours you are contracted to work thats if you have a contract.

[EatMyShorts]

First of all, why can't you claim overtime? You work a 12 hour shift? You must be mad.

If he even tried to claim overtime he would be gone. End of

Why - please expand. If he works overtime on a duty he has not done before then the OT is put on the training budget, and a decent manager would realise if he is claiming excessive OT then he may be having problems and would either get it sorted or try retraining.

They would not just sack him for claiming OT they would have to follow a set procedure or they would and should fail at an ET/IT.

So if he claimed 4 hours (roughly) eachday everyday royal mail would accept that? even tho its a 8hour duty all in and there paying a guy 12 hours when they could find someone who could do it in the 8 hours? Seriously?

Fair enough he's not been in the job that long but they would just test his prepping etc. to prove he cant meet the standards then he would be out of a job.

Theres a guy in our office who finishes at 3 or 4 everyday even on tuesday's but the deal to keep him in a job was that he never claimed OT.

[shadow]

To be honest when people are really slow and able to claim lots of overtime it's like theyr'e being rewarded for being slow. If you're fast you get nothing. But if you get chucked about then thats fair enough claim the overtime.

[delboy]

Poor lad need some proper training and some stability on the same walk for a month at least..

Good luck mate and if you like the job don give up, you will soon be up to it if you hang on in there..

[belle smith]

Do you have any physical problems that cause you to be so slow at prepping? On a walk with 1000 letters if it takes you 5 hours to prep that's 3 letters a minute - one every 20 seconds. Surely you can go quicker than that?

I'm not the quickest preper either but i have dyslexia possably a problem for you as well? You shouldn't be working hours and hours every day without overtime.

[krussel]

Should I do the honourable thing, concede defeat and resign, before Im asked to go? Or am i being too hard on myself? Does anyone know of 'slow' workers similar to me who are still working after many years, or are they usually terminated?flojon
Offline


Firstly NO you should not resign, dont be so hard on yourself we all had to learn

With this absorbtion lark ive been put on some real pigs of frames where nothing is clearly marked and its been a nightmare standing there trying to find the right slots. When it starts to make my head hurt i stop prepping and "road" the mail.

What i mean by this is firstly place the letters into piles of the same roads then prep it into the frame. Its still a slow way of doing it but its easier because you work one section of the frame at a time and it saves brain overload when you stand there feeling kinda lost. Give that a try and you should get it prepped quicker.

Stick with it mate