No 'Counting empty slots' thread?

[Hitcher]

In WTL on Tues they said they'll be counting everyone's empty slots on Wed before anyone can leave the office as part of a national thing.

Seeing as there no other thread I'm guessing it's not national at all - what are they up to?

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

Because no doubt managers are under the impression that this week is relatively quiet and by showing how low the call rate is, they can justify how many delivery points are on our frames and not need overtime. And then they will try and twist this data to say walks need to be made bigger to make us all work to our finish time, and/or start lapsing indoor working, or jump further on the "performance issue" bandwagon.

However, they are big flaws with these call rate counts including...
Data analysts would laugh at how little these counts are done, no meaningful conclusion can be drawn from the odd days or weeks we are asked to do this
OPGs will forget about counting addresses that have packets but no mail
OPGs will misjudge in the office which packets will actually be attendence calls, not surprsing when there are so many different sized letterboxes out there on modern day 500+ address walks
OPGs will fail to count businesses as attendence calls, which they should if the business is open, they need to be handing over mail securely to staff/volunteers and this takes more time that posting mail through a letterbox
OPGs will often not be delivering D2D as per spec, delivering 1/6th per day, even if there is no other mail
OPGs will often not count double slots properly, if two addresses share a frame slot, they need to see if both addresses have any mail (not just see something in slot and not count either address)
etc. etc.

And that is before we even talk about how strange these counts take place at quieter times and yet you never see sign of them during Xmas pressure weeks, how we tend to be hammered with DSA either side of the counting days etc.

[BingBong]

Oddly today I had issue with slots on my frame. Today was quite a heavy one and took me abit longer to throw off. I said to Manager I may struggle to complete but was willing to book it if they wanted/if I needed to. Manager said I should be able to prep quicker with the amount of slots I have. I just said ok ill be coming in later tomorrow and working my contracted hours only. Someone else can prep it. Makesure its done when I arrive so I can go out on time. He changed his tune after that. Arse.

[NewPostieUK]

When counting do they check every single letter? Maybe some of the empty slots have 'accidentally' had letters from adjoining slots put in them? What about doubled up slots? One slot for two addresses with two letters in, they'd have to check to see if both letters were for the same address.

Who has time to count empty slots?

[olilew]

Who has time to count empty slots?

MANAGERS!

[WHITEANT]

Its another bully boy tactic,as the other posting said even if there is an empty slot ,u could have a packet ,register.The empty slot could be a terraced house or it could be a long lane how can u tell your time span

[fishtank]

I cheated on this once although obviously i'm not advising anyone to do this.
Once i was finished prepping if i had 3 letters for number 6 and nothing for 4 or 2 i just spread them out.
Management didn't even think it strange that 95% of my calls only had one item,it was funny though.

[newtimes]

I cheated on this once although obviously i'm not advising anyone to do this.
Once i was finished prepping if i had 3 letters for number 6 and nothing for 4 or 2 i just spread them out.
Management didn't even think it strange that 95% of my calls only had one item,it was funny though.

No, that’s not cheating, its creative accounting..

[Hitcher]

We were told to put cards in if there no letters but you had a packet and the managers were the ones doing the counting.

We've just had lapsing brought in Mon, Tues, and Sat because the forecasted figures are apparently 13-18% below normal for our office.

[krussel]

We were told to put cards in if there no letters but you had a packet and the managers were the ones doing the counting.

We've just had lapsing brought in Mon, Tues, and Sat because the forecasted figures are apparently 13-18% below normal for our office.

They have as lapsing Mon & Tue but sat NO WAY. Does anyone have time for that

We are really pushed on a Sat.

[Lounge Lizard]

I cheated on this once although obviously i'm not advising anyone to do this.
Once i was finished prepping if i had 3 letters for number 6 and nothing for 4 or 2 i just spread them out.
Management didn't even think it strange that 95% of my calls only had one item,it was funny though.

No, that’s not cheating, its creative accounting..

Put Door To Doors in that day.
They probably wouldn't notice identical items for every address,

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

We were told to put cards in if there no letters but you had a packet and the managers were the ones doing the counting.

We've just had lapsing brought in Mon, Tues, and Sat because the forecasted figures are apparently 13-18% below normal for our office.

13-18% less mail does not show how the mail and packets that have arrived in the depot will be split, it does not automatically mean 13-18% of addresses will have no mail or packets at all. Doing a call rate for one day, one week or even one month does not necessarily mean that the mail will split the same way when mail is down.

If doing the job correctly, isn't the call rate supposed to be ~80% and only have a 3% call rate for all types of attendence call packets during the quiet "model week" in mid-late summer?

Is the mail down by as much as they say? Sequenced trays are supposed to arrive at our frames with ~150 letters per tray, I've seen over double that recently some days when the mail is supposedly 33% lower than average. Are manual trays being overfilled too, to look like their is less mail by volume, but not neccessarily by item count? Are they including all the DSA items?

I would not trust managers to accurately count my frame and then tell me I had spare time to do lapsing, for a start they have absolutely no idea about the letterbox sizes on each round, they will make sweeping generalisations to suit their needs.

[bag69]

We have lapsing mon - Fri. From next week we are going to double lapsing on Tues. Wont be long its Mon as well. Then everyday.

[BernardBresslaw]

Why have you got time to lapse every day?

[maninred]

I wouldn't trust ANYONE in Royal Mail to count ANYTHING correctly