Have Your Say results

[arty_morty]

Ours came back this week and rather predictably they were pretty negative. I can obviously only speak for my office and also with the benefit of a whole 3 months as an RM employee, but since I joined the one thing that has struck me is the real anti-management feeling. It borders on total rudeness and insubordination at times and I can't believe many other businesses would tolerate it.

Our DOM didn't go into specifics but he mentioned that quite a few of the the surveys asked for him to be removed from his job. These are the same people that would go running to their CWU rep if the management so much as forget to have the Coke machine filled.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying our DOM is perfect - far from it, but surely he deserves some respect? As a newbie I don't know all about the 'good old days' but from what I hear (first hand from a very close friends' father who had 40 years service with RM) the 'good old days' are part of the reason the company is financially screwed now.

I find it a good place to work. I get on with most of my colleagues and hope to be telling stories about my 'good old days' in a few years.

[clashcityrocker]

He desrves respect if he earns it.
If he doesn't - he doesn't.

[taurus88]

It isn't the worst job in the world, not by any stretch. There are good days and there are bad days. However, I think that you and I, as relative newcomers to the job, should probably refrain from pre-judging it too much. We are in a honeymoon period, and to some extent we are being mollycoddled even if we don't notice it (easier duties? a little bit of leeway in terms of making mistakes? no bullying from above?). I'm not saying you're wrong and they're right, it's just that they have a different perspective to you and hence it's difficult for you to see where they're coming from.

[fishtank]

insubordination

Do me a favour Arty...change your avatar...it isn't very funny.

[Godric]

haven't had one of them in our office for years i thought royal fail had stopped doing them

[Grinder64]

The sad fact that, in my experience, all the DOMs I've had to endure are exponents of an almost quasi-militaristic cultural mantra that seeks to demean staff at all opportunity from the very top right down the chain. Examples are myriad, from being refused leave (when carried days exist) for weddings, funerals and any other important 'human' circumstance that friends in other forms of employment just roll their eyes with the incredulity of it all. The 'guilty until proven innocent' wall of conceit and arrogance for somewhat minor discrepencies, the permanent impression that anyone off sick is somehow 'swinging the lead'... I could go on but I'm sure that everyone here has at least some first hand experience of the kind of execrable petty bureaucratic nonsensical jobsworth that stonewalls this organisation. With the advent of the bonus culture and looming privatisation I feel that things aren't going to improve any time soon...
'Have Your Say' is a token piece of corporate fluff that achieves negligable positive outcomes - a few 'first line fix' distractions do not change the core of why some people have had a gut full of the kind of condescending, demeaning and demoralising attitudes that run rife throughout the white collar aspects of RMs management 'style'.

[arty_morty]

insubordination

Do me a favour Arty...change your avatar...it isn't very funny.

No problem. As soon as an administrator asks. Enjoy your tea.

[pokos27]

Not all Doms are bad, as long as they communicate. Royal mail have given so much revenue away since Dsa was introduced.
The blame goes to The Eu, royal mail wasting money on consignia, and this cost cutting bonus system.
Each delivery office is different.

[DirtyHarry]

Ours came back this week and rather predictably they were pretty negative. I can obviously only speak for my office and also with the benefit of a whole 3 months as an RM employee, but since I joined the one thing that has struck me is the real anti-management feeling. It borders on total rudeness and insubordination at times and I can't believe many other businesses would tolerate it.

Our DOM didn't go into specifics but he mentioned that quite a few of the the surveys asked for him to be removed from his job. These are the same people that would go running to their CWU rep if the management so much as forget to have the Coke machine filled.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying our DOM is perfect - far from it, but surely he deserves some respect? As a newbie I don't know all about the 'good old days' but from what I hear (first hand from a very close friends' father who had 40 years service with RM) the 'good old days' are part of the reason the company is financially screwed now.

I find it a good place to work. I get on with most of my colleagues and hope to be telling stories about my 'good old days' in a few years.

Blimey! If we'd had a few more like you in years gone by, the lot of the working classes would not have improved one iota.
Respect is earned, no matter who you are, or what title you hold.
As for why this company is "financially screwed", I suggest you look first at senior management, just to give one example, we have one with the ludicrous title of "director of letters", he alone pulls down a combined salary and bonuses totalling £1.7million, for a few hours a day, a few days a week. We have over 200 more senior executives at Royal Mail.
That's why we're "financially screwed", and not because a postie "in the good old days" might have finished his duty an hour or two early.

[arty_morty]

Thanks Harry, I didn't know about the director of letters, as I'm sure there are many other drains on resources in upper management I'm yet to hear about.
Perhaps my original post was badly worded. Of course respect is earned but I get the feeling that our DOM gets a lot of grief for things largely beyond his control or influence.

Maybe they're not really even managers merely mouthpieces for the people who make the decisions.

Incidentally, from what my friends dad and indeed my friend himself also an ex postman, tell me I think I would have preferred the old days. There seems to have been more socializing then. Its non-existent at our office.

[Lincox]

Thats because of the divide and conquer culture that has been brought into all forms of uk employment and most significantly by the management of this company. The whole process of deunionising and desocialising carried out by management is designed to destabalise in order to reduce the impact a united workforce can have on the decisions that the management wish to pursue. Unfortunately our union leaders made a dramatic and costly mistake last december when they introduced a period of calm. This decision completely blew away the strength that had been built up over the previous months in favour of the workforce and has left us just as the management wanted. Divided and conquered. You only have to look at the infighting on this forum, the lack of comeradery within each delivery unit, to see that Royal Mail has been able to deliver exactly the instability that it sought, in order to achieve its aims.

[Running Man]

I agree totally with clashcityrocker. Your DOM will get respect IF he earns it; not simply by being a DOM.

(Certain other threads do not call them DIMs for nothing do they?)

[smok3y666]

insubordination

Do me a favour Arty...change your avatar...it isn't very funny.

I think it's funny

[dados]

dunno how you can judge after only 3 months fella,the management are in the most part,a joke,no way would they survive in another management position outside of RM,they would be laughed out of the door,i came in & wonderd why 99% of the posties were so ignorant & digging their heels in to the management,i thought that the mail was the MOST important thing to get right,get it delivered soon as.............now 5 yrs down the line its just "shite rolls downhill attitude",customers are a distraction in management eyes,we are all subversive lazy unflexible workshy shysters,again in management eyes,open yours & smell their coffee,the futures shite,the futures orange (TNT orange)

[Sharkeyes]

Not all Doms are bad, as long as they communicate. Royal mail have given so much revenue away since Dsa was introduced.
The blame goes to The Eu, royal mail wasting money on consignia, and this cost cutting bonus system.
Each delivery office is different.

You hit the nail on the head there! THE EU ISTOTALLY TO BLAME FOR ALL OF THIS CRAP!