This post carries on from yesterday's waffle about the Royal Mail, and my comments on how efficient, reliable and generally wonderful I find them*.
Parcel delivery
Parcels are, of course, only delivered when most people are at work, and the scrawled note that's shoved through my door afterwards appears to have been done so in frustration and surprise every time. "Why is nobody in?!" But I can cope with that- Royal Mail workers don't want to have to work when everyone else is in the pub or doing their weekly shopping any more than I do, and it's a clash of timescales that has processes in place to deal with it.
When delivery is attempted at one of the numerous households that are, surprisingly, unoccupied during working hours, there are a number of options that the diligent delivery person can take**:
- The 'left with neighbour' box can be ticked.
- The 'left in a safe place' box can be ticked.
- The item has been left propped up against the front door.
- The item has been left in one of the recycling bins.
- The item has been flung with gusto over the garden wall, fence or gate***.
- The 'returned to your local Post Office' box has been ticked.
This is where the fun takes a running jump, and the surreal back-end collection room of the post office comes into play.
Firstly, my local post office, which is inside a comfortable 8-minute stroll from my house, is shunned in favour of the one in Kettering, which is a 20-minute drive away.
Arriving at the more distant branch on a Saturday morning involves the following steps:
- Join the queue of disgruntled customers that is already snaking its way across the car park.
- Wait for around forty minutes as the queue continues to grow behind you at a much faster rate than it is shrinking in front of you, until you enter the tiny room with the reinforced glass partition.
- As you near the front of the queue, tempers begin to fray as there is one person behind the glass who quite clearly has just wandered in off the street and has not yet been told The System****.
- When the next person in the queue hands over their 'sorry you were out' card, it is dropped in the bin, and the grubby notebook is consulted, presumably to find out if it makes any more sense than last time.
- The stranger behind the glass then proceeds to look under his coffee cup, behind the calendar, and in, under and around the bin before scratching his head and wandering out of the back door, where someone appears to be very noisily playing basketball with someone else's***** package.
- If you're lucky, the guy will return at some point. If you're extra lucky, he'll be holding a package. If you're luckier than a lottery winner with a blackjack, it'll be yours.
Sometimes the guy returns with a shrug and asks for your phone number so that you'll go away in the erroneous belief that they'll call you when (if) they find the package that they have so lovingly filed for you.
I've even been there when a particularly infuriated lady has enquired as to the possibility of a colleague stepping in to help out. The bewildered guy behind the glass stated, in all seriousness, that he's the only one there, evidently oblivious to the large and saggy man slurping on a large and saggy burger that everyone in the cramped, sweaty and pungent room can see through the glass.
In fairness...
It's not just the Royal Mail. Of the many delivery companies that I have had cause to deal with, not one has shone out above the rest as an example of good practise to be followed by all. I strain to recall a time when I haven't had to make a twenty minute drive to the back end of nowhere after an attempted package delivery. Even less easily recalled in my mind is an occasion in which I wasn't greeted by the sight of generic delivery company employees either engaged in an active sporting activity or otherwise just beating each other senseless with somebody's undelivered package.
In fairness...
It's not just the Royal Mail. Of the many delivery companies that I have had cause to deal with, not one has shone out above the rest as an example of good practise to be followed by all. I strain to recall a time when I haven't had to make a twenty minute drive to the back end of nowhere after an attempted package delivery. Even less easily recalled in my mind is an occasion in which I wasn't greeted by the sight of generic delivery company employees either engaged in an active sporting activity or otherwise just beating each other senseless with somebody's undelivered package.
* Not very.
** With none of these options, though, is there any indication as to who the parcel is actually for.
*** O.k, so this may well render the package 'safe' in some senses of the word, but has the added benefit of making sure that the parcel and/or contents are also 'broken'.
**** Another possibility is that there is no System.
***** You hope.
**** Another possibility is that there is no System.
***** You hope.
LMAO! Thank you thank you thank you for putting a smile on my face this evening! I needed that!
ReplyDeleteI am fortunate in that when I have to fetch a parcel from the post office it is the one round the corner. What is not so lucky is that the queue usually stretches out the door along the street and half way across the zebra crossing, and when (if) I finally reach the counter, the old man then leaves the post office and disappears to have what I believe he sees as his "fag break opportunity" under the disguise of parcel hunting! Either that or he walks to Daventry to find the thing!!
On the other hand I will stick up for my own postie, who has, on occasion, gone in search of awaited parcels when I have collared him in the street to ask him, AND has dropped it in to me on his way home from work. So you see, all is not lost and there are a FEW dedicated people who are still willing to go that extra mile! Or maybe I just smiled nicely at him!!!
Consider this. When mobile phones started they realised that they could only charge for calls that reached a destination, so voicemail was added to most accounts.
ReplyDeleteIf you were starting a parcel delivery service would you aim to call on empty houses?
Just stumbled across this post through a bit of Googling for people who, like me this morning, are a tad less than happy with Royal Mail's "service".
ReplyDeleteIn the last couple of weeks I've faced the joys of the 'returned to the delivery office' about 4 times (yes, it's Christmas time I know) and the horrors of the little room. Though today was very different...said little room was unavailable as a power cut had rendered the electronic security door unavailable. Queue angry mob as the manageress walked out and informed everyone, then promptly shrugged her shoulders when asked "can you not go in through another door to get our parcels, we have work to get to?". Even funnier was the fact that the manageress was wearing a high-vis jacket with "manager" emblazoned in large letters on the back...talk about putting a bullseye on yourself! The farce continued when she came back with a lever to manually open the door...then couldn't work out where the lever needed to go. By this time the angry mob had grown, so she left and sent a minion to do runs to and from the back room for everyone's parcels - which he decided to do ONE at a time. Apparently common sense wasn't a tick-box that needed checking on the application form for his job.
Rant over...glad I found your post as it's clear I'm not the only one with feelings like these!