Ah, the Royal Mail. It's enough to make anyone go postal
Don't blame the poor postmen and women for going on strike
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Victoria Coren The Observer, Sunday 18 October 2009 Article historyA massive postal strike is due to start this week. Letters will go undelivered, important bills and cheques will be delayed, packages may be lost forever in dusty back offices. The first question to ask is: how will we know the difference?
But nobody seems to be asking that question. Instead, people seem angry with the postal workers for striking. Everyone is grumbling about the inconvenience, damning the greed and worrying loudly about Christmas deliveries. We hate it when the shops put decorations up in October, yet, somehow, suddenly, now is exactly the right time to start thinking about posting a Nintendo DS to cousin Johnny and complaining that those selfish bastard postmen won't jam it through the letter box in time.
I can only assume, from the rage, that we think they have nothing to complain about. We must believe the Royal Mail is well managed, with sufficient workers and correctly allocated resources, thus resulting in the strong resemblance between a Swiss clock and the current state of the service.
Please. Before we were distracted by the opportunity to complain about postmen, we complained constantly about the post. The whole service has been totally cocked up. There are no longer two deliveries a day, the local post offices have all closed and "first class" now means "three days if you're lucky".
Do you know your postman? I used to know mine. His name was Neil. He was a foot fetishist.
As Neil and I got to know each other, we struck a deal. If I had a parcel, he would bring it at the end of the round, lugging items of occasionally significant weight until the whole shift was over (because I go to bed late and fear a 7am doorbell), on condition that I opened the door and signed for the package barefoot. He didn't need to touch my feet, nothing like that. It wasn't weird. He just wanted a quick glimpse of toe, in return for a decent lie-in.
It was a good deal. We were very happy with it. I used to take a Christmas cake to the sorting office every December.
But Neil is long gone. Our post is not just delivered at a different time every day, it's delivered by a different person. Often a miserable, underpaid temp, who stuffs all the mail for six flats through the door in one torn and crumpled bundle because he or she is so frightened of being penalised by the manager for not meeting a preposterous delivery target that there is no time even to take the rubber bands off.
In beefing the delivery targets to unmanageable sizes per worker, then sacking postmen for failing to meet them, in axing the second post and generally thumping down the iron fist, the Royal Mail managed this year to make a £321m operating profit. They celebrated by imposing an immediate pay freeze on the workers.
So the profit benefited neither the postmen nor we hapless post-receivers – all of whom are, technically, the owners of the Royal Mail. It's a national company. It's ours. But we'd have been better off if our business had carried on making a loss. The profit simply inspired further cuts and a worse service. It's like telling your wife: "I got a juicy £5,000 bonus this year, so we had better cancel that holiday."
Meanwhile, the world is full of people trying to make a living by asking: "What do customers want? What can I invent, provide or sell that people are looking for?"
The Royal Mail don't have that problem. They know what people want. We want regular deliveries, a post office in walking distance and a happy postman familiar with the round. And yet they won't provide that.
It's as if they, a state company, have looked around at lucrative private businesses and thought: "Hmm… Virgin Media take days to send technical support… Amazon aren't contactable by phone… Apple computers need to be upgraded every couple of years at enormous expense… maybe we'd better become s**t as well."
In ignoring what they know people want, they are rivalled only by banks. Banks persist in refusing to be contactable by phone, taking the mickey with the small stuff and paying themselves fat bonuses while we get no interest from them – in any sense. I went into Lloyds TSB and queued for 20 minutes because there was only one window open. When I got to the front, the teller, Dot, said: "Hello Miss Coren."
Hurray! I thought. After 10 years using this branch, they finally know me! They recognise my face and remember my name!
And then they refused to let me take out the cash I needed, because I couldn't show proof of identity. This from a bank that is currently advertising its "personal touch".
They put that in the adverts because they know we want a personal touch. But we don't get it – not from private companies that should be wooing us, nor public companies that we collectively own. Whether as customers or bosses, we are short-changed.
This is what we should be angry about. Aren't you? I bloody am. We are treated like tossers. When we read that postal workers are going on strike, we should share their fury and frustration rather than turning ours against them, the gutsy naysayers who are walking out against the sharp end of bad management that affects us all.
They are doing the right thing. They are making the protest that we all should and would if we knew how, rather than just rolling our eyes and miserably putting up with it.
If it does take until Christmas for Royal Mail Group to figure out that the £321m should be ploughed back into securing jobs, increasing wages and making the service better not worse, don't shoot the messenger. In not delivering, he's just trying to deliver. Pay your bills online, take the Nintendo round personally and shake hands with a postman on your way.
