NORMAL!

[swintonpostie]

hi lads first time posting on here , been with royal mail 3 months now and was just wondering how it used to be as i hear stories of how great the job used to be but now how really f***ed up it is ! what has gone wrong , and also is there any hope for us part timers of getting anything close to a living out of this place ? i really do work hard for the pittance i earn and im just wondering is this ever gonna change for the better ? love the post guys you lot really do keep mr entertained !!!

[coxie]

yeah the job used to be good about 5 years ago and even better before that, now they just want to save money and us posties cop all the extra work for it. All you can do is get as much overtime in as you can, there aint many if any full time contracts being handed out at the moment.

[axeman]

Simple answer is NO...........

[DirtyHarry]

You wouldn't believe how good this job used to be.

I look at it now, and I'm staggered how in such a relatively short time, 7/8 years give or take a month, the parasites infesting the RM boardroom have reduced my job to one I detest, turned my union into a lapdog, and transformed a top notch service into one that just about gets by on a wing and a prayer.

And before some w****r comes on and tells me, "well, if you don't like it, get another job." This 'aint 1978 again, nor is it even 1988, shyte, it 'aint even 1998. No, this is 2010, the two idiots in No.10 are younger than me, and the trend for more jobs going to the wall, than being created, shows no signs of abating, and with immigration, the population keeps growing, and.....Need I go on?

[baldrick]

what has gone wrong ?

It went downhill rapidly after :lfo and :cfo took charge.

[TeeferTiger]

It wasn't that bad 3-4 years ago either. Even in that time it's slid downhill faster than you'd go down some of the hills around here in winter...

Morale in my old office used to be great. There was banter, laughing etc. All gone now.

I can understand that RM is (technically) a business and it needs to make money, but the way it's heading is not what any of the public (or staff) want.

[dblad]

It wasn't that bad 3-4 years ago either. Even in that time it's slid downhill faster than you'd go down some of the hills around here in winter...

Morale in my old office used to be great. There was banter, laughing etc. All gone now.

I can understand that RM is (technically) a business and it needs to make money, but the way it's heading is not what any of the public (or staff) want.

But the only reason those at the top want to make more money for RM is so they can get more money for themselves, they don't give a flying f**k about RM, to them all it is, is a cashcow.

[kimski1976]

change can be uncomfortable for anyone. i joined about 3 years ago. back then i guess the people who were already there were fed up but for anyone new it was normal and it was great. now i realize after 2 yeas how bad it is. all royal mail is about now is saving money and making profits. everything royal mail do now, they only do it because they think they can save more money. this idea of CDV is incredible i really cant believe its happening. i read in the courier they are trying to be greener but thats gone out the pan. you have 20 people in a office working full time hours but only on a 20 hour contract. now the union has been bought they can do what they want. we're working longer, harder for less. and there is no end to it ever. i mean, they got this sequenced walk in our office now. but there aint enough drivers or vans down at the MC to bring it to us because they dont wanna employ more people and think they can do the job for less. we have to send our drivers to pick most of the mail up. all i can say is take as much from them as you can. do not work for free! and claim everything you work for.

[TeeferTiger]

I have to admit, when I first joined RM, I couldn't believe how easy you'd had it for so long (please don't start getting the lynch mob ready!). Good pay, job and jack, small rounds...

I've worked in retail, call centres etc and the amount of cr*p we used to get on a daily basis, the shifts we had to work and the amount of stuff we were expected to get done in our work time and all for around £2-3 less than I started on at RM.

I think I've said before. I was a supervisor of 14 staff, doing rotas, dealing with complaints, spot checks etc all for £6.14/hour prior to joining RM.

I joined RM on £7.28 as a basic OPG. No hassle (back then anyway!), no having to take responsibility for anything. Just out on the streets, sticking bits of paper thru letterboxes. I realise that's not all there is to the job, but for around here, £7.28 is/was a bloody good wage. Plus you don't work Sundays or Bank Holidays. No more working Boxing Day because the public can't stand their families enough to stay at home and so want to go mooching around the sales.

I started working in the RLE with a guy who'd been with RM 30+ years and his laziness was infuriating! When he was on A/L and the other guy went sick at the same time, I had absolutely no problem running that office on my own. So why were they allowed to get away with basically just sitting there, drinking coffee and looking at Ebay when nowhere else I'd ever worked had had such a lax attitude to getting the work out of people they were paying them for?!

Then things started to change and people were kicking off that RM were asking them to do more work. Well, yes, they're asking you to work the hours they're paying you for. Is that, given the other jobs on the market, that unreasonable? Now there's only 1 guy in the RLE and the admin guy helps him out. There was a huge fuss about that when it was obvious to me, and everyone else in the office, that the PHGs were just lazy.

It has now, however, gone too far. The amount of work they're asking you to do, given the time they give you, is unreasonable. And that's all happened in the space of 3 years.

[Mr Blonde]

I don't mind doing the work, never have, it's just the quality of work we handle nowadays.

I put that much shite through peoples letterboxes that if I pulled my pants down and plopped a loaf through I doubt they'd be able to tell the difference.

[TeeferTiger]

I don't mind doing the work, never have, it's just the quality of work we handle nowadays.

I put that much shite through peoples letterboxes that if I pulled my pants down and plopped a loaf through I doubt they'd be able to tell the difference.

Work is work innit :)

I know a lot of people in my office were kicking off about having to do the work. They saw it as doing extra work for nothing when it wasn't. It was asking them to work their hours.

[andy2007]

Yes, but as you said yourself: It's now gone from a fair days work, for a fair days wage. To unreasonable workloads. Basically, we've gone from one extreme, to the other, in the space of a few years.

It was a big culure shock for me, when I first started. I went from having to work hard, and fast. To being criticised for "going too fast" (indoor work in my case, not Deliveries). And it didn't bother me in the slightest, when we started working as I'd done in my previous job. But now, we're at a stage, where people feel compelled to cut corners on H&S, just to get enough work done, to keep the Managers off their backs. And things are even worse, for those of you in Deliveries.

Back, and shoulder injuries in particular, began to rise, a couple of years ago. Because people were carrying as many bags as possible, on each trip from the feeder cages. And from what I hear, the same type of thing is happening in Deliveries, because people are overloading their bags to save time. That's a far cry, from working all your hours, and working hard. It's now a case of people risking injuries, to avoid being accused of being lazy.

[gazzariah]

Dead right reckon in next 10 years or so there will be a hell of a lot of ex posties about walking on sticks and in pain its dangerous for some this job is and managers could not care less that you could end up on about 10 tablets a day for the pain. All they bothered about is fiddling and trying to make us do more.

our office has more knackered knees than a orthopedic hospital

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Dead right reckon in next 10 years or so there will be a hell of a lot of ex posties about walking on sticks and in pain its dangerous for some this job is and managers could not care less that you could end up on about 10 tablets a day for the pain. All they bothered about is fiddling and trying to make us do more.

our office has more knackered knees than a orthopedic hospital

The local hospital dropped off this months issue of crutches for our office this morning