Lazy buggers at the Post Office

The BBQ Pit
41

You know, some people might say your bitter little animosity over whatever perceived slights you feel you’ve suffered might is concerning. Not me though - I get a warm fuzzy sense of superiority just knowing that there’s people like you out there who can be fucked with so easily.

Anyway, here’s a little experiment for you. Go to your zoo on a good summers day, and watch the counter staff. Now go to a popular bar on a friday night and watch the bar staff. I appreciate being out in a bar on a friday night might be a shockingly new experience for you, but honestly getting out a bit more could be a good idea in itself.

But back to the experiment. Now I’ll admit that my experience is a bit skewed, as I’ve been to a few more bars than zoos, but even so I’d wager decent money that a bar on a busy night is way more hard work on its counter staff than, for example, manning the ticket counter at a zoo. I’d even bet that was true for a busy McD’s at lunchtime. For example, I note that a busy McDonalds branch will serve up to 30000 customers a day. I’d be surprised if there’s many zoos that beat that figure. I’d be surprised if there’s many post offices that could come close.

Finally, I’ve got to say how much I’m enjoying the your strange rage that customers should want to be served in a timely manner. For some reason, you feel this makes them “entitled assholes” or “oblivious fucks”. Really, I think you might want to consider whether working with customers is your natural calling. Have you considered something that might be more suited to your strengths and temperament? You hate customers, and despise all interaction with them - have you considered technical support?

42

Indeed. If the Royal Mail and/or the USPS are anything remotely like Australia Post, then welcome to the Brave New World.

Up until the late 1980s, Australia Post was formed as the Australian Postal Commission (a sub-branch of the government), then it became the Australian Postal Corporation, a “Government Business Enterprise” which was to be run as a business to contemporary standards of private sector efficiency, the only difference being the government was its 100% owner (but it was no longer part of the government machine itself). This alone should hint strongly at what I’m about to tell you.

I started there in 1990. It was still pretty old style. It was a kind of government sheltered workshop. We didn’t have to do much work if we didn’t want to, we could say “fuck you!” to the boss and maybe only get “a paper” for it, we had straight-up crazies off the street working there, we could drink gallons of beer in the locker room, there was a drug and even a reported prostitution scene, we were massively over-staffed, and the pay was fantastic (mostly huge amounts of overtime and penalty shifts). We were complete public sector fuck-offs, the lot of us. Over the next fifteen years, the corporation put the boot in to all that. Of course, they were right to do this, but they didn’t know when to stop. Now, all the crazies are gone, we have Japanese-style “teams”, mission statements, team building seminars, daily team briefings (always reminds me of Hill Street Blues), most of our overtime has been lost (my pay is roughly the same as it was in 1999), we absolutely work our bollocks off (quite common to literally break a sweat through sheer physical labour in what was once an office environment), we will get heavily disciplined for the slightest transgression, the crazies all got fired, we have bosses hiding behind corners with stopwatches doing secret time and motion studies - you never know when you’re being watched and timed, and if you come up short, they’ll quietly come up behind you and ask to “Speak to you for a moment” (an hour’s grilling in the office), and as for small mercies like having a cup of coffee at your desk, forget it.

You can always find a worse job out there, but to say that the Post Office is some sort of lazy government backwater is an attitude about twenty years out of date.

And contrary to popular opinion, we don’t cost the taxpayer a cent in subsidy. In fact, we provide the government with a dividend.

43

Dude, retarded person, people out partying at night being fed liquor by an overworked liquor supplier is absolutely not the same situation as a long line of people with kids or packages who think of you as their servant. If you really need me to tell you that the perceived relationship between a bartender and a drinker is different from the relationship between a package-mailer and PO-worker, then I take back my “retarded” crack because I meant it as a joke but it’s obviously literally true. People don’t complain when a bar is busy; it’s part of the party atmosphere. When’s the last time you equated a long line you were standing in to a raucous crowd at a bar?

Besides which, at a bar, it’s OK for the bartender to vent as he goes: “Keep your pants on, you’ll get your drink when I get to you.” Try that at a PO, where the wage slaves just have to absorb all your bullshit with a smile. (Now do you see what I mean by “wage slave”? Workers who would get fired for any response other than “yassuh massah” when their customers abuse them.)

44

As comic-opera as this is getting, the bottom line–my obscured point–is that “lazy” is more due to your, the customer’s, perception, than to the actual facts of the situation.

If you’ve ever worked in a similar situation–and bars are only similar to the actual retarded–then you know that it’s assholes like the OP who refuse to examine their assumptions who are the real problem.

45

Clearly we frequent different late-night drinking establishments.

Actually, I consider someboy in that position to be doing exactly the same thing, which is supplying me with a straightforward pre-planned product at a set price. (The product being the carriage, not the parcel.)

46

Different product, different atmosphere, different relationship. As evidenced by the fact that you don’t hear the same kind of self-serving complaints.

Look, assholes (and I mean that in the nicest possible way), I understand. See, the only thing that has kept me out of jail for responding to these people the way they deserve to be responded to is that I understand that they know not what they do. None of them has ever really stopped to imagine what life is like on the other side of the counter; they’re reacting to their own set of projections and presumptions, which have absolutely no parallel whatsoever with the real world they’re standing in.

So fine, a bunch of the same deluded assholes I deal with every day have started a thread here. It’s the same kind of pity that I hold for my everyday customers and their self-crippling lack of awareness of the real world that keeps my own world in perspective: they’re selfish assholes who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. So I feel, as I say, enough pity for them that it kind of balances out the righteous rage their presumptuous solipsism engenders. Which keeps them unharmed, and me out of jail.

So don’t worry your retarded little heads about it: no one who knows what real life as a wage slave is like takes any of you seriously, because we know that the world is not as you imagine it to be, and we pity you.

We also spit in your soup, so karmic balance abides.

47

I just want to point out that there’s a difference between both reigsters being open, and 2 of 8 registers open with possible employees being out and about. I work retail. If there’s a line and a register open, manning the register becomes my number one priority.

48

An old friend of mine worked for the post office during the Christmas holiday. He told me once that Hell likely had nothing on that place and that ‘going postal’ sometimes made all the sense in the world.

49

Yeah, but you have a passcode and an authorization to use the register. When I worked in a department store, a lot of the floor personell didn’t. During the holidays, you’d sometimes hear customers complaining that there were employees all over the store but only a handful of registers open. (It was a method of theft control-- each cashier was issued a till and no one else was allowed to access it, making you solely responsible for any discrepencies.)

I’d imagine the post office is similar: only a few people are allowed access to the registers. So, the guy who’s assiduously straightening the display of shipping boxes might not be* able *to ring up the postage sales.

50

Are you under the impression that no one else here has ever worked in customer service? I’ve worked in customer service most of my adult life. I worked at a movie theater, a restaurant, a bar and grill, 2 florist shops, and a grocery store to name a few. I worked as a sales person for a hydraulic seals company where all of the men think that women aren’t capable of wielding a ruler and figuring out which extra special “gasket” their piston needs. I’ve dealt with bad customers, same as most people.

No one is saying that all postal workers are lazy fucks that deserve to be taken out back and shot. It is ridiculous to have 4, 5 or 6 windows and two people working during the busiest parts of the day or the year. That is not how business is done anywhere I’ve ever worked. No one is suggesting that a post office employee shouldn’t be allowed to take a lunch, we are suggesting that postal management should find a better way to staff the office. If I go to a post office during lunch time, guess what? I’m probably on MY lunch break. If I have to spend 45 minutes in line at the post office (and in larger cities, I have), I’ve lost my lunch time. That is just as ridiculous as the grocery store having 18 cash registers and 3 people working them at 5:30 in the afternoon when everyone is buying groceries for dinner.

TheLoadedDog, see lezler’s post about how much postal employees start off at in the United States. The starting pay for a teller is about $8.00 an hour in a bank here, in my experience. Postal employees start at twice the wage of a bank employee, with far more benefits than most non-government employees in the United States.

51

Uh, you should probably read the OP before you take an argumentative stand in a thread. Just a thought.

52

Yes, yes, you spit in our soup and if it wasn’t for your amazing restraint you’d be upon us in an instant. If I may move back to reality for a second, really who do you think you’re kidding?

You appear to be a deeply bitter person, projecting god knows what past incidents into a truly strange, spittle flecked rant that someone dared say that their local post office staff were lazy. Worse than that, people have said how daft it is to have so many empty counters during busy periods. My good, the sheer ignorance and presumptiousness of us all. Clearly no-one who would post such things has any knowledge of working behind a counter, or dealing with the public. Fortunately, you’re here to educate us, bringing to bear your unrivalled knowledge of customer support in the most pressured and challenging environments (a post office, a zoo, and a video store).

Anyway, enough of mocking you. Feel free to continue with the venting, which with any luck is some sort of cathartic therapy for you. There was something so touchingly sad in your last post - the image of an embittered video store worker claiming to pity the people on the other side of the counter - that right now I feel like you need any release you can get. Rage on.

53

Yes, I understand sometimes you’re not able to help where you’d like to. And sometimes customers don’t quite understand why you refuse to help them. Even when you explain it to them.

54

I used to be a postal worker.

When I first began my employment with Royal Mail one of my duties was to drive to local POs and collect mail to be taken back to the sorting office for franking, sorting and delivery.

Many times having called at the POs the staff were sat in back chewing the fat, not on any break, just loafing around. Meanwhile the office was full and as I said in my OP less than half the windows were open despite the staff being available for service.

Fuck off you half witted twat.

55

What exactly in the OP contradicts what Jaade was saying?

56

Summarizing the OP: Doper goes to post office which is packed. Only two of 6 windows are open and at least one of the employees manning the window is socializing when she should realize that they are far too busy for such trivialities. To add to his injustice, someone behind him is trying to give away his cold by coughing all over the damn place. Doper gets tired of waiting after 10 minutes and leaves.

Ok, I’ve read the OP…not once but now twice. I wish to second Bippy’s question. How did any of my posts contradict this?

57

The problem with your post is that you didn’t fall all over yourself agreeing with a self-righteous cunt who has apparently spent his life bitterly wallowing in wage slavery and over-analyzing shitty movies.

58

I read a column a few years back comparing McDonalds to Banks. (I can’t link it because I have no idea where I saw it.)
Essentially, it said that if Mcdonalds can manage to get their business to run quickly and efficiently, why can’t banks? ( and post offices). They are all businesses and all in customer service industries. So why can you be in and out of Mickey Dees in five minutes and still behind the same twenty people in the post office.
The answer is that there is more of an incentive to keep customers happy when you depend on their returning business to survive. The post office doesn’t care to be run efficiently because they are not motivated to do so. In an earlier post someone said said that his post office had recently had a big change. I would venture to say they got a manager who looked around and said, “wow, we do this very inefficiently.” and decided to fix it.

59

The extra windows may only be open one day a year: April 15th.

While I have a good impression of you as a poster from other threads, here I have to ask: How fucking retarded are you? Tending bar is nothing even remotely akin to manning a register at the post office. A bartender gets treated politely and tipped by all customers who want more than just their first drink.

How much do you tip the post office counter jockey? What incentive is there to be polite to the postal worker? Who willingly spends time in a post office for the atmosphere?

WTF?

60

Sorry, just noticed you are in England. April 15th is tax day, and every year (like clockwork) local news channels around the country send correspondents out to the post office to show the hordes of idiots desperately trying to get their returns stamped by midnight.