The Worst PO Christmas Ever (And It Could Have Been Avoided)

[Running Man]

Well the Christmas rush is almost over in POL and I was wondering...
does anybody else feel totally and utterly demoralised bythe amateurish way in which our so called senior managers have buried their heads in the sand during December?

Constant queues in our offices.
No Christmas pressure overtime, despite it being the busiest time of year by a long long way.
No cover for absent colleagues, without sending a begging email to the CAM or worse still, an actual conversation with him or her.
No let up in the irrelevant use of conference calls (The Saviour of our floundering business- NOT).
No relief from the constant stream of inane and banaal emails that most people don't bother to read anyway and simply succeed in aggravating the life out of the recipients.

Next week should be a whole lot better, although the public seem to have totally disregarded the last posting dates once again and still expect their cards to arrive in New Zealand two days after posting!

May I wish you a Merry Christmas and a New Year. Not a Happy New Year as there is absolutely no way it will be a Happy New Year in POL courtesy of Richard Barker and his merry band of CAMs; may they burn in Hell for the crap that they continue to send our way day in and day out!

Who knows...somebody at a higher level may notice that we could actually manage without the CAMs in 2010 and save our BMs a lot of unnecessary hassle (bordering on harassment) and more importantly to the accountants, an awful lot of money.

So may I also wish Richard and his cronies a Christmas equal to that suffered by all of our front line staff who are, after all, "the heroes of this business". (A quote from Ronnie Flynn, possibly the only senior manager I would urinate on in the event of fire).

[dongash]

OUR PLACE HAS BEEN A JOKE THIS XMAS. IV'E DONE NEARLY 20 XMAS'S AND THIS HAS BY FAR BEEN THE WORST, BOXES OVERFLOWING (NO RELIEF COLLECTIONS) PACKETS BY THE YORK FULL NOT DELIVERED, ALL SPARE STAFF TO MAIL CENTRES, NOT ENOUGH STAFF TO DELIVER THE PACKETS!!!! (TRIED TO DO IT ON THE CHEAP ) EVEN SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO DO REGULAR O/T ALL YEAR TELLING THEM WHERE TO GO!!!! ALL BECAUSE THE BOSSES AT OUR LEVEL ARE TERRIFIED OF THE BULLIES ABOVE THEM!!! WE DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH VANS, BUT OUR BOSS WAS TO SCARED TO ASK FOR MORE!!!! IV'E NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT IN MY LIFE. PEOPLE WHO DO S.A'S STRUGGLING FOR VANS AS THE VANS WERE STILL OUT ON DELIVERY!!! WE HAVE ABOUT 15/20 OF OUR VANS (OUT OF 40) ON RURAL DELIVERIES. THEY DON'T START TILL 7 AM SO WE HAVE NO CHANCE. I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT WHEN WE WERE GETTING OUR O/T SIGNED AND OUR BOSS WAS ASKING WHY WERE SO LATE BACK!!!! I WAS GETTING BACK LAST WEEK AT AROUND 4PM EVERY DAY. GOD KNOWS WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE WHEN OUR WALKS ARE MADE EVEN BIGGER!!!! THERES SOMETHING WRONG SOMEWHERE ISN'T THERE?

[PostalOfficer]

All I can do is agree with every word RunningMan has said. I've seen P.O. Christmases since 1980. Heavens, by now I expect to work hard, but this has just been silly. Like your office, no O/T, one helper from head office turned up on one day. No O/T and 2 off sick with stress not replaced apart from the leave reserve being released as there was no A/L. Even my manager agreed with me we were running it with the same amount of staff you would have for a normal week at any 'normal' time of the year. Plus numerous visits by the acronyms to check we were all selling properly (4 managers monitoring 4 staff one day!!!!) To add the icing on the cake we`ve had our duty review. Losing two experienced casuals plus sundry other staff who have already left not being replaced, equals something like two FT duties going even though we can hardly cope with current staffing on a normal week. Boss was gobsmacked to see them count FSS and Postshop staff in the `total serving` figure.

That`s before you start serving the queue with all the seasonal inane questions like "Will it still get to X even though I have posted a week late?", "Why does post take so long at this time of year?", "Could you wrap and address this parcel while I finish off my mobile conversation?", "Will you be paying double pension in 4 weeks time?".

Dunno much of what's going on in the sorting offices, but every year when our main letter boxes were overflowing, my old boss used to say "Darn me Roy, Christmas has taken them by surprise again!". Although I think this year we're looking at the P.O. being deliberarely run down rather than the usual incompetence.

BTW, fair play to Ronnie Flynn. I had a bit of a go at him during a "feedback session" a while ago. Came up to me after and said he appreciated me speaking my mind. Came to the office a few weeks later and spoke to everybody, even sorted out a couple of long-standing HomePhone queries.

[The BFO]

Three of sick – FSS busy on the mobile telephone, Horizon Retail Sales System not working, ‘When are they paying my money next week?’

Loving it!