"Summer" lapsing question?

[steve1873]

Hi there, our office went through methods revision last year and as part of it had a full office re-sign. Part of the way through the re-sign the DOM was informed by sector manager that he had to identify 3 duties for a lapsing plan. 1 of the duties was the duty I picked. I was informed of this (had picked it the same day) and offered opportunity to change. I asked DOM what it would mean to maintain duty I had picked (was a good duty) and was told it would only be in effect during the summer "lull" and even then the revision should be planned as such that opportunities to lapse were not all that high. Fair enough, I felt reasonably assured and decided to keep my pick.

Fast forward to this summer and I as expected become a reserve so to speak. I really have no arguments with this as I signed for duty with that knowledge. However, I have now been informed my duty will continue to be lapsed on a pretty much permanent basis.

So now, despite being a duty holder with 10 years service find myself in the situation of being punted here, there and everywhere for the foreseeable future. If I had been told this was ever likely to be the case I would have politely said, nah not having it and picked one of the other remaining duties. I feel like a new start all over again.

Do I have any options? My thoughts right now are, "ok fair enough make me a reserve, but don't expect me to extend by even a minute". But even at that I still feel myself stressing out over the situation. I could accept it better if there were no duties left when it got to my pick and I was a reserve by default, but that wasn't the case. I feel I was misled to a degree (although perhaps not intentionally). I had a discussion with my line manager today (DOM is currently moved to another office perhaps permanently) and although lino was sympathetic, he said not much he can do other than show me a list of available duties for the next week and I will in effect be "senior reserve". Again though, that isn't what I signed for. I'm more than happy to be flexible during the summer efficiency period.

What REALLY is pissing me off just now though is I am one of a minority of people in our office that do the job properly, take meal relief every day etc. The runners run around, don't take breaks and never use equipment, as a result are finishing early. This shows there are slack hours available which in the management are I suppose quite within their rights to try and fill via lapsing. But it doesn't matter how much lapsing people are given, they just rush round even more to get it done.

So any options? Or continue bending over and having a combination of selfish colleagues and *management shaft away?

*not really meaning our direct management as I do understand they are having pressure applied from above.

[islfor]

Get your rep involved

[DUNDEEPOSTIE]

We have been told, on numerous occasions, that if mail volumes fall below the "model week" at any point in the year, lapsing will be expected.

[BoltonPostie]

Have you learned a valuable lesson?

i.e NEVER take for granted what some DOM tells you will happen in the future..

[Jamesethefirst]

We have been told, on numerous occasions, that if mail volumes fall below the "model week" at any point in the year, lapsing will be expected.

Model week? For crying out loud who talks like that in the real world. Lapsing is going to happen come hell or high water, probably at Christmas as well.

[clashcityrocker]

Model week? For crying out loud who talks like that in the real world.

Everyone should.
It is one of the fundamentals of the revision.
It formed the basis of your staffing level and dictates what lapsing opportunities are available.

I wonder how many people know what the model week is in their office?

[Mezza]

Model week - don't make me laugh, it means diddly squat in our office.

We have already been told that lapsing will continue for the foreseeable.

Our office is fiddled left right and centre by the DOM, he does as he pleases and gets away with it.
IE our office revision has included 2 firms delivery driver duties - nobody does these duties, because quite simply they have not existed since the revision.
We don't have 2 spare vans lying around, nobody is allocated these duties, ever. there are no actual deliveries on wither of these duties.
It's been done to allow for an extra 80 odd hours a week in the office budget, which can obviously be used to pay for O/T and eventually will be slightly eroded as part of budget cuts come next year etc,

We also have a total of 52 real duties in our office each day, with just 65 staff in total to cover them.

[biglad75]

This has happened to my mate in our office . We had revision and resign over 2 years ago , he signed for a good duty and did it for a few months . He was then informed that one of the 2 duties had been chosen for lapsing plan on Tuesday and Saturday but as he was the driver he'd work alone on those days . As time went by they began to lapse both leaving him and his partner as reserve twice a week , but before long it was everyday . The walker kicked off and after months off with stress was eventually given a really s**t walk that nobody wants , my mate who was the driver was offered an equally s**t alternative but refused as he's got 25 years service . He's been dogs body for 18 months now , no fixed day off , not knowing from one day to next what duty he's on . They even had the cheek to try and make him have every Tuesday off but he told em to boll#### . Union have said they are powerless and that management should have thought of this problem before resign.

[gary1975]

This has happened to my mate in our office . We had revision and resign over 2 years ago , he signed for a good duty and did it for a few months . He was then informed that one of the 2 duties had been chosen for lapsing plan on Tuesday and Saturday but as he was the driver he'd work alone on those days . As time went by they began to lapse both leaving him and his partner as reserve twice a week , but before long it was everyday . The walker kicked off and after months off with stress was eventually given a really s**t walk that nobody wants , my mate who was the driver was offered an equally s**t alternative but refused as he's got 25 years service . He's been dogs body for 18 months now , no fixed day off , not knowing from one day to next what duty he's on . They even had the cheek to try and make him have every Tuesday off but he told em to boll#### . Union have said they are powerless and that management should have thought of this problem before resign.

He should still get day of which is allocated to his duty recardless of which duty he is on

[fishtank]

Resourcing to workload makes the model week redundant anyway, It makes a lot of your revision fundamentals redundant, It actually makes a revision redundant, It will also make many of us redundant....

[mailman71]

Resourcing to workload makes the model week redundant anyway, It makes a lot of your revision fundamentals redundant, It actually makes a revision redundant, It will also make many of us redundant....

Wish to hell they would make me redundant.

[Bahia Feliz]

I wonder how many people know what the model week is in their office?

The other day our BS board said model week 74k items,actual that day 54k yet there were loads of cut offs,book overs etc!

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

No faith in the figures at all, whenever we are told we are below the model week, the figure is not broken down to show how much of it is letters and how much of it is far more time consuming (attendance) parcels so we can compare it to the model week. Besides, figures seemed to be pulled out of a hat, never seems to be close to reality and everytime they decide to tell us the figures I strangely always seem to go over by some margin.

Not to mention the gross inconsistency of how many letters are considered a perstop of sequenced mail. One day I had two perstops, which sounds pretty run of the mill, until I then tell you I had real trouble pulling out the first letters in both because they were cramped in... 400+ letters in both! Isn't the standard supposed to be ~200 letters?

[iHateD2Ds]

I can see why you are narked off with your duty loss but not sure what you can do other than wait for a duty to become vacant.
Maybe a reserve is not a bad as it sounds if you have chance to pick your weekly duty.
Yes, there are plenty of people who start before their time , doorstep packets and run round .These silly tw**s make other people who do the job properly look slow which ends up with management harassing them for no completing their delivery.