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Monday 25 April 2005

Royal Mail Sickies [Lurks]

The sad decline in the great British postal service has been the subject of other blogs here but yesterday this was thrust once again into the lime light by the news that the Royal Mail is offering incentives for workers to show up to work.
Apparently it's working too and attendance levels have risen by 11% but they had to give away 37 cars and 70 won £2000 of holiday vouchers and a further 90,000 were handed £150 worth of vouchers, just to show up.
I'm flabberghasted. What's wrong with the standard "show up to work or we sack you" approach? I also have to ask whether it's a good thing that the dishonest workshy among them are being enticed back to work since I bet this is the same lot, that over the course of the last six months, have liberated three CD orders from Amazon, a wireless card from Dabs and a memory stick from EBuyer from me.
Perhaps the Royal Mail should think about offering additional incentives not to thieve as well? Or perhaps we should close the entire rancid operation and let (competent) private enterprise replace this festering monpolistic reminder of the fall of the British service industry.

9 comments:

  1. Pragmatically speaking, I'm also having to think about which retailers I can safely use because of the inherent unreliability of the royal mail. Eg. using retailers that offer inexpensive couriers or retailers which tend to quibble less about goods not showing up (Amazon etc) as opposed to my recent experience with eBuyer (hah, I went back to them after six months just for a memory stick after they fucked me over last time) resulting in being utterly stonewalled and pursuing a chargeback on my credit card.
    Anyone else have recommendations?

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  2. Play are really good for that as well. I've had postmen steal a Rocky Boxset and a Teachers Season 1 boxset, and on both occasions, a quick email to Play got a replacement sent out quick-smart.

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  3. Sounds about right. They are always late with my post. 3pm sometimes!

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  4. Just out of interest, how do you know its Royal Mail and not some theiving fag at EBuyer or Dabs?

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  5. Posties steal, and that's a fact Jack.

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  6. That doesn't answer my question

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  7. Stealing at the companies goes on prior to items being posted. When there's a record of despatch from companies like Amazon, eBuyer, Dabs, Play etc etc - either they've ALL got people stealing packages in their secure facilities (I've seen Dabs' facilities, at least, and they take security seriously) or the postie is stealing it.
    Also, as per previous blog, the issue with the sorting houses stealing are very well documented. I've caught my postie dumping mail but generally most of the thieving goes on in the sorting offices.

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  8. Dont worry Lurks it will all be over soon - down here in the home counties we are on first name terms with our postie who often pops in for a haircut from Di when making my daily Amazon/Ebay delivery. Also, on more than one occasion, he has broken his round to deliver something to me earlier in the day because "it looked urgent".
    I kid you not.
    Luv
    Houmous (in his usual seat in Swissair lounge at Geneva catching up on emails hehe)

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  9. Yeah, this does seem to be a disease that plagues London in particular. It joins other peculiar diseases limited to the locality such as the famous London soggy chip.

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