Estimating how much mail you can deliver

[Orinoko]

We're struggling with oversized deliveries and getting out late in our office which has lead to many posties finding it hard to complete deliveries in the allowed time. Overtime is given if you go over your time but many posties don't want to do this so initially were cutting off. The managers didn't like this so now we're asked to let them know if you don't think you'll be able to complete. Now as we as posties know it's impossible to determine how long a delivery will take as it depends on the number of people who are in and therefore how many p739's you have to write out which slows you down. But because they don't want mail brought back you have to estimate and take what you can without going over your time. Obviously very hard to get right so really you should guess judging it as if a high number of customers are out just in case.
This brings me to the problem that happened recently in our office. 2 posties with a shared van didn't want to go over their time so told the line manager they might not be able to finish. He asked them what they coud take in order to finish within their working time, they estimated and that's what they took out. However on this day they only had to write out one p739(very unusual) and so returned to the office 20 minutes early. The line manager saw them and a decision has been made to suspend them from deliveries as in his opinion they could have taken more.
You could probably guess it reasonably close 90% of the time but sometimes for example if you write out a dozen or more p739's you could be 30minutes or more out so surely you do have to take less than what could be an average assessment. For example If I just had 20 packets to deliver and everyone was in it could take 30 minutes, if everyone was out and I had to 'now' knock on neighbours doors too it could take over an hour. How can we possibly estimte this?
Other posties have told me they were silly and should have slowed down or just sat in the van waiting to come back on time but why should they, that would be dishonest yet they're being penalised for being honest.
If managers are going to work this system they have to accept the facts that estimating how much you can take is always going to be wrong on occasions. Also if you do come back early do you have to tell a manager, as I don't think they did, but then I've never been told to inform a line manager if I finish early taking everything out so why should they.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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