LOVING P&L

[dubdaz]

Two days in and the ashen faces of the runners (the majority) who have'nt been allowed to come in early and are made to take there full break (clear the floor policy).There chickens have come home to roost good and proper

[banner18]

Ours is in soon, cannot wait. The gravy train is coming to an end. Whilst certain people work hard and do their time, others take it easy and finish early. Walkers getting easy days like today, whilst others do their hours. LONG LIVE PARK & LOOP!!!!!!

[fishtank]

Don't get too excited.
If the wheels come off your revision managers and flyers will revert to type,clear the floor and full break policies will fly out the window...
Early starts will be positively encouraged as will dumping the trolleys for bag on shoulder.
Beware is all i'm saying.

Walkers getting easy days like today, whilst others do their hours.

And banner...if walkers have it so easy and it bothers you so much...why don't you become one?
I'm sure your seniority would get you any walking duty you wanted.
It's funny how this only ever gets said on a tuesday...never on a wet friday in november when the mail's piled as high as an elephant's eye.

[DB1100]

Oh dear,I see a rude awakening,park and loop is terrible.

[DHARMA16]

Oh dear,I see a rude awakening,park and loop is terrible.

Well said-whoever came up with it had no experience of delivering mail

[krussel]

Not there myself but my personal delivered mail went from a 12 ish delivery to around 5pm. As fish said they have now dumped the golf trollies and its back to around 1pm.

No one i have ever spoken to has a good word to say about it though.

[Ozzvaldo]

Ours is in soon, cannot wait.

If....and it's a big if....your planners have got things pretty much spot on (highly unlikely) and your management "team" are receptive, and thereafter reactive, to any problems that will inevitably arise (forget it), then I would buy a few extra tickets for the Euromillions this week because you're bound to win the jackpot. On the other hand, reality may well turn around and kick you smack in the chops.

My office was amongst the first in the entire country to undergo transformation (November 2010) and problems with duty content that were apparent then are still almost entirely unresolved....I work the odd day off covering various van share duties and the differences between some of them are quite staggering. Take it from me, the planners and their computer programs may well be wonderful entities in their own sphere, but that sphere is, rather curiously, not the business of producing reasonably equal volumes of work for all of the van-share rounds in a DO.

And that's another thing, after a few days of this brave new world unleashed upon your office, even Neanderthals like myself will realise that some of the duties that seemed so attractive (i.e. easy) in the re-sign don't actually transfer too well to using LWTs over the ground....and a few of them will not like it. And then you're at each others throats, and it escalates....and it's not nice. Even after all this time the fallout is still rumbling on in my office amongst certain individuals.

Management have tinkered with a few things here and there, but it's all a bit cosmetic and we're still lumbered with basically the same Frankenstein's Monster of a delivery system that we had foisted on us 20 months ago....we've got deliveries bringing stuff back at 3.00pm now, just wait until Christmas.

The best way to deal with it all, although management will probably try to pressure you into doing the exact opposite, is to start at your correct time, take your full break, work at a steady, reasonable pace, not worry about cutting off if you don't want the OT, and generally try not to get involved in all the moaning and slagging off that will inevitably rain down upon your DO. The last point is very important because we allow inadequate managers unmerited breathing room if they can fester divisions within the workplace.

Finally, Banner, one thing I think you should try to wait for as long as humanly possible is the day when you or your partner (unless you're lucky enough to have selected a HCT, rural, parcel duty etc) inadvertently (unless you're warped enough to do it on purpose) run the wheels of a LWT through a pile of dog crap and subsequently drag it into the back of the van. It will happen sooner or later....and then repeatedly.

Good Luck with the revision....you'll bloody well need it!

[banner18]

I was being sarcastic really. A bit of simple pschology here.
I don't particularly care about p&l really. It's not that i think it will be all rosey after. The fact is that the job has been crap for some, these past few years, whilst others are sitting pretty. P&l is a leveller, everyone in a van, you come back early and you get daggers like all drivers have had years. Maybe extra work. I've been working my a** off for past five years, every minute of the time I get paid whilst others stand about in office waiting to rush out of the door and gain half hour from the job. Others using every trick in the book to try and screw a fellow postie and gain 30 seconds.
The fact is, all the moaning and groaning about p&l I keep hearing on here, is only what some of us have been dealing with long before p&l.

P&l may be crappy, but at least we will all be in the crap instead of just some of us.

[goddard7]

Must admit i am struggling with it,not enjoying deliveries at the moment.

[Ozzvaldo]

P&l may be crappy, but at least we will all be in the crap instead of just some of us.

Not necessarily true, banner.

I mentioned in my previous reply that there are quite big differences in workload between some of the van shares in my office, but do you really believe that the posties established on the "easy" ones return to the DO early and risk being sent back out to do the work that other poor saps have submitted as undeliverable in the time available on their own horrendous duties? Of course they don't....and I'll say no more on this particular subject before I dig myself a deep hole which I can't climb out of. A bit of imagination allied with your knowledge of human nature should give you a few ideas as to what I'm alluding to.

Another factor that can't be ignored is that even if you're working with somebody that you consider to be your best mate, s/he could turn out to be, in the cold light of day, one of the laziest b******s that ever walked this green and pleasant land. If not, then maybe the reserve who gets parachuted in when your mucker's sunning themselves in Skegness for two weeks in August might just be of the ilk (and they do exist) that decides that as it's "your" duty, you can do the lion's share of the work while they coast through the day. I'm not talking about them doing less actual delivery than they should, but rather them putting their feet up, metaphorically speaking, while you're left to organise the large parcels, special deliveries, collecting van keys/PDAs, packing the van, doing the van checks etc. Of course you can always complain to the management (and just see where that will get you!) or even have your partner's tripes out over it, but either way it's very infuriating and stressful and inevitably leads to resentment....and it's coming to your office soon. There are individuals in my DO that are notorious for this type of selfish gittery and guess what? no amount of cajoling/threats from partners/management has altered their behaviour one iota in 20 months.

HCT duties are an interesting case. The general consensus amongst van share staff is that the HCT holders are casually strolling around the place living the life of Riley on p**s-easy duties while everyone else is flogging their collective guts out dragging sawn-off golf trollies around the borough. The HCT people, on the other hand, seem to think that the van shares are casually strolling....etc, etc. All I know for sure is that the vast majority of HCT rounds didn't change at all during the revision and most, but not all, of them are allocated between 3hrs 45min and 4hrs to deliver a SINGLE trolley of mail with NO replenishment (and mainly in TERRACED neighbourhoods). And you wonder why there's a lot of moaning and bitching going on?

I really hope that your office revision has been done equably, banner, because much of the moaning and backbiting that accompanies these changes is rooted in perceived, whether true or not, unfairness in duty structures. I have to say that despite our planners having the magic of Georoute at their disposal, our revision looked suspiciously like something that could have been cobbled together on the back of a fag packet by simply lumping two existing and adjacent deliveries together into a shared van scheme and hoping that it all worked out alright in the end (not a single one of these "new" duties being subject to test before they were unleashed onto us). The fact that a number of the existing deliveries were known by all and sundry to be unbalanced in the first place simply exposed Georoute and its worshippers to be the sham that we had previously suspected.

You're absolutely correct, banner, when you contend that at least with P&L you and your colleagues will all be in the crap together....the only problem is that the experience of several hundred offices has overwhelmingly demonstrated that some of you will "only" be up to your ankles in it, while others are picking the stringy bits out from between their teeth. I wonder which category you'll end up in?

[ashadd]

We have all got to realise that we are paid an hourly rate. They can give us all the work they want to, it doesnt matter, just take it all out, and when its time to cut off , then cut off and bring what you have left back to the office. They sometimes take a couple of loops off some of the walks , but even that isnt enough. Oh and yes , we still have the early starters, the racers, and the ones that dont use trollies.The trouble is that we are going into a repick soon, and if you pick into a walk thats been killed by a racer, then all you will get off management is " well if they can do it , then why cant you?"Thats when the grief will really start.

[banner18]

I wouldn't dispute most of what you have said Ozzvaldo, but most of it is down to human nature itself and not the system. Whatever system you could devise, some people will take advantage etc etc...
One of the most important things is to get the right partner, that way the majority of your working life will be bearable. Picking the right partner is down to a personal judgement of character. If you chose badly, that is your problem really.

As for people taking their time or parking up etc. I am surprised this doesn't come to managers attention. Surely when cover is on these duties they tell the managers the duty is easy. Also, let them carry on risking their jobs by being lazy, they will get their just deserts sooner or later.

[skull]

HCT duties are an interesting case. The general consensus amongst van share staff is that the HCT holders are casually strolling around the place living the life of Riley on p**s-easy duties while everyone else is flogging their collective guts out dragging sawn-off golf trollies around the borough. The HCT people, on the other hand, seem to think that the van shares are casually strolling....etc, etc. All I know for sure is that the vast majority of HCT rounds didn't change at all during the revision and most, but not all, of them are allocated between 3hrs 45min and 4hrs to deliver a SINGLE trolley of mail with NO replenishment (and mainly in TERRACED neighbourhoods). And you wonder why there's a lot of moaning and bitching

In our office ( maybe the same office as Ozzvaldo), the rivalry between the people on HCT duties and those on P&L duties can be entertaining and amusing. I do both and most of the HCT duties are easier than any of the P&L duties. I would say an HCT heavy day is the equivalent to a P&L moderate day, on a P&L heavy day it's beyond compare. Any HCT duty holder (in our office) who thinks they are getting the short straw and feeling hard done by, should be made to do a P&L duty for a month as punishment.

[Ozzvaldo]

Personally speaking, banner, I don't mind the P&L system as a way of performing deliveries, it's just that Royal Mail will not acknowledge that it takes longer than the older system to cover the same ground. I'm quite happy to either work OT (providing I get paid properly for it, that is) or take stuff back to the office when required, which is fairly often, but unfortunately one can't always account for the mindset of ones partner.

I'll say it again, but there's no guarantee that your regular partner, or any of the reserves that you might get paired with, will see eye to eye with you over your own preferred way of tackling every delivery issue arising from P&L. Even the most laid-back and carefree types in my office have been known to blow the occasional gasket when returning from P&L with certain individuals, and unless your office is full of saints then sooner or later your good self and somebody who wants to rush around, forgo their break, drive recklessly, sit picking their nose in the van instead of nipping off with a couple of parcels while you're finishing a loop etc (the list of potential contretemps is infinitely variable) will end up at each others throats. Human nature, yes, but a pain in the arse to contend with on a regular basis if there should be unresolved conflicts of opinion on how the job should be done....although theoretically there should be no problems if everybody is prepared to work to "the book".

Of course, plenty of van shares do get on very well, and I can think of one or two in particular who've tackled the revision head on, solved problems by means of proper discussion i.e. without trying to s**t on each other, and are generally prepared for a bit of give and take due to the fluctuating nature of mail volumes from day to day....and, of course, they use their break entitlement, use LWTs, walk at a steady rate etc. Even these people, however, can occasionally be seen sloping about the place on a slow fume when their partner's on holiday and they've been lumbered with one of the office numpties as a reserve.

As for our management actually dealing with issues such as early finishers and the need to fine tune those deliveries which persistently experience time difficulties, then all I can say is that it's a good job that my colleagues and I haven't been holding our collective breaths since November 2010. What they do seem to have grasped rather well, however, is how to apportion blame for any undelivered mail/OT onto the lazy, shiftless incumbents holding the duty rather than the slower delivery methods that they now insist upon. Run around a bit and work through your meal relief and you'll soon be back in their good books, though.

Once again, banner, I really do wish you the best of luck with your office revision.

[dubdaz]

I've always enjoyed the job,I've been doing the job properly for years,finishing near to time most days.I dont rush but i dont dither.It does'nt bother me that the majority finish alot earlier than me because I see the true cost of their folly. P&L holds no fear if you dont care if you have to cut off and your mentally strong enough to cope with an incompetant LM try to bully you
Day 3 of P&L and the senior runners who've been having it easy are suddenly not the first out the office anymore and are now shouting the odds that everyone should go out at the same time ( it did'nt bother them for the last 20 years+ though,when it was them getting out and finished first).

Loving P&L