Hubbahubba,
Attempting to answer your question as to why people would work for free.
A lot of it comes down to our old friend job & finish. The reasoning was that you came in early, got out the door early, got finished early and went home early – result! The rest of the day was yours to do with as you pleased.
Despite the revisions, despite the increase in workload, this mentality still exists for the majority. Our office is a good example, we had our revision and for all of a least a whole week afterwards, those returning early were put on IPS for the next day’s mailsort. However, for this to happen, it required that a line manager had to remain to ensure that people didn’t just go straight home. As management were as keen as any of their staff to leave early, they soon let that idea fade into oblivion. We are now back where we started, prior to the revision, with job & finish.
Then there’s the issue of completing the job. Correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve never worked in a mail centre so I’m making assumptions here, but when you reach the end of your 8 hour shift there is another shift that will come in and pick up where you left off. In delivery it’s somewhat different, if people don’t want to work beyond their hours then they have to estimate how much they can do and get a line manager to agree to take some of the workload off them. It varies from office to office and from manager to manager but rarely do they make it easy for them. People may get pressurised into taking more than they can cope with, they may find themselves being made to feel inadequate because they cannot complete, they may be made to feel guilty.
Then there’s peer group pressure, every postie will tell you that they have the hardest duty in the office and that yours’ is a piece of piss that they could complete in under 2 hours or 3 hours or whatever. It’s all total b*llocks of course but doesn’t feel like it to the put-upon postie, again the result is to make the individual feel inadequate.
Lastly, there’s the not wanting to let the public down. If their manager says that there is no one to cover their cut-off and that it will be left for them until the next day, they can feel obligated to complete. Who wants to delay greetings card, presents, news of appointments etc.?
This is not an exhaustive list by any means but all are possible reasons why people may choose to start ahead of their time. Sometimes it just comes down to the fact that you can’t sleep (been guilty of that one myself on the odd occasion).
Hope this fills in some of the blanks for you.
