Leave reserve duration?

[hewittinspain]

Fairly new postie here,been employed for 6 months and im currently a leave reserve. Now I know this is pretty standard for all posties but how long on average will it take to get my own duty? There are about 6 leave reserves in an office of 40 staff, 4 of which started after me so there is one other reserve that was employed before me.
So basically do I have to wait until 2 people leave before I get a duty? If one gets advertised and all 6 reserves apply then will the one thats been ahead of me automatically get a better chance? I can believe some people can be a leave reserve for years,but I did speak to a postie collegue who has his own duty thatsonly been there for 2 years. So is it a case of waiting for someone to leave/retire to move a step closer?

[aposter]

How long is a piece of string? Some of the lads in our office have been there 7 years and are still leave reserve, and not through choice. When someone leaves then the duty should be advertised and will be allocated on seniority, if it is a choice duty then peeps already on their own duty will apply. This will have a knock on effect and in general it will continue to cascade until it gets down to the most senior leave reserve getting the 'crappest' own duty if they want it.

[sussexlad]

Have a look around your office, is there a young workforce or do you have about 10 people that are due to retire? Unless people leave for other reasons then you will have to wait for people to retire.Or is there a lot of new housing estates being built on your patch? If say 2000 new houses were to be built then that might create a couple of new duties.

[Judgee]

Anything from one week to 20 years!

[olilew]

9 years and counting! My problem is that I'm full time. Every time a duty comes up it is advertised as part time, whether it was full time before or not. Also manager says if I picked a duty he'd be f****d for cover as I can cover any duty in the office, so my own contract goes against me now!

[Acca Dacca]

Four years it took for me to get a floating duty with rotational day off

[mailmonkey]

10 years as a reserve me.

[*xen*]

When I started two years ago I was allocated my own duty straight away. I was surprised and quite chuffed.

It soon became evident that it was considered to be one the worst duties in the office which none of the more senior blokes would touch with a bargepole.

This was mainly due to the fact that the partner duty-holder was a spectacularly lazy, smelly, unmotivated, slow, moaning wank-stain whom nobody could tolerate working with.

For 18 months I carried this s**t-bag, doing more than my share and finishing hours late on heavy days until finally I cracked and told the lino I was quitting. By some miracle they moved the stinking
turd to an HCT job on his own.

I now have a shiny, new partner. We get on well, share the workload evenly and as a result we finish on time everyday

The morale of the story is

If you are new and get your own duty realise that there will be a reason why no one else wants it.

[hewittinspain]

There for 6 of us. Does it normally work that one leave reserve covers certain walks? So far ive been lucky and have covered 5-6 walks but next week im on a completely new walk.

[sussexlad]

There for 6 of us. Does it normally work that one leave reserve covers certain walks? So far ive been lucky and have covered 5-6 walks but next week im on a completely new walk.

I should imagine that they would try and keep you covering walks that you know well to limit mistakes, so if your 6 reserves are good at doing certain walks then why change them about, as for next week there is no harm in learning something new, you might find you like it more than one of the other walks you cover!