lack of space and lack of staffing in callers/enquiry office

[garyinchester]

Why is royal mail not doing enough about lack of space and lack of enough staff in callers/enquiry offices i work in one on the wirral.For weeks we have been struggling and got more to come its a total joke and stressful its not fair on the staff or the customers.Longer opening hours 2 weeks before xmas is not enough royal mail you need to invest more money where it matters never mind these lush mail centres.In fact if you walk into our callers office its like walking back to the 1970,s.

[pokos27]

I agree they are so cramped, it can be chaos when things are not stored properly, its all down to cost and royal mail neglects this area.

[halfull]

ehhhh next. believe me you guys indoors have it so easy its unreal & all you do is moan easy option- go on a walk & see if you think having a little to less space is as bad as a p&l duty. some folks,

[Hitcher]

The ended up putting shelves outside the callers office in our DO and all the Specials were basically out in the open.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

ehhhh next. believe me you guys indoors have it so easy its unreal & all you do is moan easy option- go on a walk & see if you think having a little to less space is as bad as a p&l duty. some folks,

I have done both Room of Doom and am currently on a big walk 600+ on a non P&L - I would pick a walking duty anytime over Room of Doom, maybe I'll change my mind when we get it. However, the stress levels on P&L seem to be self generated whereas in the Callers Office its all external and you have no control.

[Stormproof]

ehhhh next. believe me you guys indoors have it so easy its unreal & all you do is moan easy option- go on a walk & see if you think having a little to less space is as bad as a p&l duty. some folks,

I spent over 3 years in the Room of Doom and I can assure you it is hard work, made me suicidal. Its not just about lack of space, its the lack of support off management and constant abuse off the public. Glad to be out of there. As soon as I went back to deliveries I was much happier and yes it is worse than doing a P & L duty.

[TeeferTiger]

Yeah... room of doom's a piece of p*ss... more work to do than you can shake a stick at, and you've no control over how and when you do it because you've got the callers office to look after.

I quit it and stated abuse from the public, staff and management as my reasons for quitting and did I get asked for further clarification, especially on the latter two points? No, of course I didn't. So much for D.R.A.W. Getting abuse shouted through at you while you're dealing with a customer in the other room, who is complaining about one of your colleagues misdelivering mail isn't professional, and I wasn't getting paid enough to deal with that sort of sh*t.

Nor was I getting paid enough to put up with being sworn at by a manager because the MC driver didn't take 2 yorks of missorts that the said manager had put by the door, instead of with the rest of the mail that I had put in the "designated collection area" after the last time the MC driver had left without 2 yorks of missorts. Why he left without the mail, I dunno, he had to walk past them (right beside the door), but I couldn't see them from the RLE, and I didn't know they were there because I hadn't left the office for hours due to having work coming out of my ears all morning.

Anyway, back to the original post... Ours was a reasonably new DO and so the callers office was a half decent size. However, at Xmas, even we were tripping over the packets stacked from floor to ceiling. One customer even said once that we shouldn't send packets back after 3 weeks, we should keep them for a year I told her we'd need half the town to store them.

[mazza111]

We opened up our old D2D cupboard for xmas, which was probaby double the size of the enquiry office, just for standard packets. Unfortunately it was a good walk away from the enquiry office. That was our exercise

Having done both jobs, I would rather be inside. Even if you do need to put up with a load of sht from some customers and management.

It's easier when you're the one who's in there all the time and you're the one putting things away. Makes it so much easier. Only one parcel missing last Christmas, which turned up under the seat of a van.

[alhothi]

Room of doom where do you start, lack of space, posties who dont know how to fill a P739 out properly, customers who can be very abusive,all i can say is if you havent been in there and done the job stop waffling on about how easy it is because you aint got a clue.

[zola4ever]

Callers Office, what a nightmare ! Most of the grief comes from p739s not filled out properly. I am in the " callers" all the time now due to arthritis but I have done deliveries for nearly twenty five years.
Deliveries are hard work, but I find working in the office very stressful. I can't wait for EVR or something, I just can't leave too many years in.

[TeeferTiger]

We opened up our old D2D cupboard for xmas, which was probaby double the size of the enquiry office, just for standard packets. Unfortunately it was a good walk away from the enquiry office. That was our exercise

Having done both jobs, I would rather be inside. Even if you do need to put up with a load of sht from some customers and management.

It's easier when you're the one who's in there all the time and you're the one putting things away. Makes it so much easier. Only one parcel missing last Christmas, which turned up under the seat of a van.

I agree with that part, I was training a reasonably new starter up in there who was after OT etc and, as we were always short staffed in the RLE (considering how "easy" it is, no one wanted to do it... why's that then?! ) I asked him to go and check in the packet room for any out of date packets that might need returning (i.e. been there over 3 weeks or whatever), write them in the book etc and get them sent back. He was in there for a few minutes before returning stating "There's nothing". So, I thought my colleague in the morning must've done it, although I thought it was unlikely as it would've been busier.

Later that afternoon, I go in there and pull out a coffin stacked high with out of date packets, the lazy sh*t just couldn't be bothered. Needless to say, this guy was promoted to manager. I'm not joking.

[mazza111]

Yeah, if you know you've put it away it's easier to find. We filed all normal packets by surname. Try working with someone a bit thick and kept filing anything that started with Mc under the 2nd part of their surname. Like McDonald would be under donald etc. Happened rather a lot in a scottish office

[TeeferTiger]

We used to file it under the road name.

I could never understand how some offices file them... they'd get the P739, find where it was in their book and next to it would be a number, they'd then go find it on the shelf... eh?!

[Stormproof]

Road name with the door number written on the side. If its a house its filed under the house name. Makes life easier especially when you get all those strange eastern european names

[mazza111]

Surname - Normal Packets
Date P739 - Recorded and Tracked
Chucked in the safe in any order - Specials