A day in the life of....

[Gill]

Hello,

I’m in my final year of my Product Design degree and researching into my final major project. The aim of my project is to design something to help aid postal workers and maybe even just improve the postal service on a whole.
I previously posted a topic on equipment, in case you’re reading this and getting a sense of déjà vu...

To help justify my design proposals I was hoping that you might be able to give me a run through of: The day in the life of a Postal worker. Giving a runthrough of your day to day tasks and highlighting the problems and issues that you may face?
Some information on how things are affected by sickness and injury would also be of great help if anyone has any experiences of this?

Cheers

ps thanks for the previous feedback, greatly appreciated

[stokes11eg]

Please, just read through all the posts on here, and you will see what we face on a daily basis! The only thing you could do is try and produce a new breed of Manager.!

[Stammerking]

The pouches we use have not changed for years and could do with a revamp,they basically fall to bits and are not very comfortable there is lack of adjustment and could do with a chest strap to stop them moving when bending down.You could incorparate some leds into the panels to make you more visable when cycling or crossing roads.
With a maximun weight of 16kg that is a lot of weight on one shoulder so maybe design something totally differant.

Rich

[TrueBlueTerrier]

MODERATOR POST

I know some people are frustrated at the moment because of the current "unrest" and ballot however the OP asked for advice and suggestions and the first 2 posts contained rants about Managers. Rant away but please pick your thread carefully, we don't want to scare away non postal members who will quite frankly, be bemused at the goings on we face.

The 2 rants have been moved into their own thread http://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/communit ... 08#p191408" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Exrep]

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Gill - you may want to approach the Delivery Office Manager of your local Delivery Office and ask if you can go out with the Trainer (most DOs have at least one)or an experienced Postie. This would be the best way to see what we face and would provide the best insight, also you would get to feel what its like to pound the pavements for 3 to 4 hours a day and sort the mail for 3 to 4 hours a day as well.

In fact it may be worth approaching RM HQ as you would need to shadow quite a few posties within the system to see what we do. For example just in a DO we have:
Delivery Walking Posties.
Delivery Driving Posties
Collection Posties
Callers Office/DOM assistants/RLE Locker (All indoor staff)

and then you have different centres in the system that in various ways feed mail into the DOs.

Mail Centres
Regional Distribution Centres
Bundling Centres
Distribution Drivers
MDeC Keyers

And more probably that I have not mentioned.

As an aside if you mentioned that you are thinking of becoming a Graduate Manager within RM they would I hope look on such a request with a lot of interest.