Thetownend.com

yesterday i was given the job of updating the excel spreadsheet that has all the firms we collect from, it was out of date and we've just reshuffled most of the collection routes. this took several hours and bored me to tears. i finished it about 15mins before we walked out yesterday evening, which was handy.


today, as a reward for doing such a good job yesterday, i get to do it again, but this time on the SA drives (collection routes that are covered by delivery staff)



cock.

Fascinating stuff

oh it is. i'm bored shitless. but theres an interesting resentment developing between management and staff after the strike yesterday. its thrilling stuff.

Stir it up.

I always wanted to work somewhere you could have a proper strike - you know standing outside with placards with those bin things on fire

how? shall i say the union boss called the manager a gaylord?




as for the strike, its not fun, you lose money and yesterday we were stood in the rain. last summers strikes were better, the weather was good, and one of the drivers brought in the best tasting stew i've ever had, he'd made loads of it for the people on the picket line.

mmmmm stew

oh and he made curry too but i wasnt on the picket that day. woop!

Do you have to go on the picket or can you go home and strike?

...or the golf course, or the pub ?

you dont have to, infact 95% dont most of the time.

If your nose goes on strike, picket.

Are you striking because you haven't had a bonus recently ?

yes. yes we are.

Fucking postman, sent important letters to Hillside Close, Leigh, Nr Swindon with the correct post code on and they got delivered to Hillside Close in Swindon!!  Missed the deadline thanks to your lot Leggett and Ralphy!!  Scrap the bonus and get them all a sat nav.

If a member of staff strike they should be sacked.  If they were good enough they would be able to become management and then change the business themselves. FACT

All Royal Mail do is strike.

typical thatcherite

</reg>

 I've done loads of strikes me...also secondary stuff like the famed Grunwick.

 Can tend to get your card marked by employers mind....all a bit tame these days since the legendary miners strike of 84/85. Which was a defining moment for me...Britain would neve rbe the same again.

 If managers could manage, workers wouldn't need to strike.

Thatcher will be dead soon.

damn right.

anyway - you can have my job leggett if you don't mind working 8am-11pm as i have done most of the last week...

 Have we had the Thatcher state funeral debate? I can't remember if it was here as well as the real world, where I was discussing it?

if it had been discussed on here, i'd remember being angry about it.

Strikes are stuipd eg Rover say they are going to shut down a car plant so the unions call a strike so stuipd the company are closing the plant becuase they are losing money so the plan to save jobs is to lose the company even more money.

Striking should be banned and trade unions more strictly regulaed.

Thatcher could only dream of the type of support Scargill had. The tactics she used to break the miners were totally despicable and Roy Lynk RIP was absolutely duped.
Thatcher should go down in history as one of the biggest pieces of shit ever to have disgraced this country. 

 Yeah, but it's a good laugh....you're probably going to lose your job anyway so why not gpo down with a bit of a fight...might get a bit more compo, and can develop ideas and skills ....part of the reason why employers don't want unions and activists, is that they want an acquiescent workforce.

 

 I decided if we all got a day off work, (paid) then go for it.

i think it was discussed somewhere on here once. £7 million it would cost wouldnt it/

I'm sure Thatcher would want the state to splash out public money on a funeral for her. How else would her beloved society mourn?

Most Unions these days are self interested shits of the highest order.  I thought the idea of a Union was to protect people who were being EXPLOITED and were not able to have their voice heard as one person.  These days it's simply about avoidance of work and moaning that some other job gets paid more than them.  I fucking loathe the bastards now (and yes, I've been the minnion and the boss).  If I really felt they were truly working for the greater good, I be fully behind the idea, but good old fashioned personal greed gets in the way.  I'm generally Socialist by nature, so Unions really really frustrate me.  People should be able to be rewarded or otherwise based on their own performance or otherwise, just so long as everyone has an equal opportunity.  I've witnessed Shop Stewards dobbing in other employees because they couldn't get what they wanted, so much for being the voice of the people.

In her own words "there's no such thing as society".

i would picket her state funeral

Updating excel spreadsheets sounds piss easy and if it's only for two days it's not the end of the world.

It's great to have a good moan though  ;D

Stop moaning, light duty boy!

You are all lefty commie bastards. the fact is most coal mines were at the time LOSING money why the fuck should I have to pay to support a compnay that was losing money and before you say it yes the gov. should not have bailed out Northen Rock but guess who did that labour ie the union party left of central.

As for the royal mail, tube driver, train drivers etc etc all cunts they know they have the public swecred so they strike to get more money and are greedy cunts!

Ever considered a career in The Diplomatic service, or Relate, or ACAS?

If that is aimed at me you should know I am a trained Mediator.

and a self-taught wanker

calling a bloke a wanker is not an insult. You wank I wank so what

Amazing the things you find out about people on here.

So which one are/were you ... Hunter?

Does that go for people like myself (firefighters)?

Depends. I think you do a dangerous job and should get better rewarded and therefore didn't mind your strike about pay. However I think you striked about shutting stations etc (ie cost cutting) and i thought that was wrong and anyhow when you lot strike you still go to life threating calls so it's not a real strike is it? would your crew stand on the picket whilst a hospital burnt?

i get your point.

the crew would still go to a fire at a hospital if it was burning as its life risk innit.

all the shite like car and bin fires, false alarms the army dealt with, but by the time they got to the jobs out in the sticks the fire was more likely burnt itself out.

to be honest though i dont ever want to be in that position again, we got a good support from the public but still had the occasional twat come and give us abuse..

I will have a "ding dong the witch is dead" party down the 'Hive  and get suitably flarded and argue with fucking mummy boy tories like GFM and RobbieT

socialist scum

Nice...

I can't be a muumy boy as mine is dead

OK - substitute Tosspot for Wanker

 The industry which is most subsidised in this country is farming, and has been for years. Nobody ever complains about it, other than a few farmers when their subsidy drops....they're even paid not to farm now..(set aside)

 Of course, the farmers are to be found in the Tory shires...therefore their politicians fight for them....and quite rightly so.

 When I were a kid the Tory party leadership was almost entirely composed of large land owning gentlemen farmers like McMillan and Douglas Home...their cosy world was brought down by the revelation that their party was riddled with corrupt and sleazy individuals who'd happily betray the country fro a good shag.

 In much the same way that Major's government was ousted by revelation after revelation of their traditional contempt for the British working man and woman.

 Have they changed that much.....Cameron's missus comes from landowning farming stock....the daughter of landowner Sir Reginald Sheffield, she grew up on the 300 acre Normanby Hall estate, near Scunthorpe.

 Will Cameron be fighting to remove the subsidy you pay to Sir Reg GFM?

And those nuclear power stations don't fucking pay for themselves you know. The amount of subsidy the nuclear industry has received over the last couple of decades could have kept the all the mines open until the last ounce of coal was dredged up.

 Yeah but the nuclear boys never brought down a Tory government and the miners and friends did...therefore were thought of as "the enemy within"

 Which is why the likes of Joe Gormley NUM president in the 70's worked for M15...

I have some friends who currently work for Royal Mail,one is even a union rep and i trust their views
completely.For instance,RM does not promote lower management (Supervisors/team leaders) on the
basis of ability.A culture has evolved of favouratism,nepostim and criminality.I won't bore you with long
details,but i'll just touch on a few.A mail centre manager was appointed to his current position,because
he "blackmailed" his interviewer by having "something" on that person.His father in law told me this!

Secondly,East London mail centre,management paid the union rep to make local deals in their favour.
These came out over a period of time and are facts.

The mail centre manager as mentioned above,used to phone up workers who were on sick leave,tried to
bully them back to work(one had even had heart surgery the week before!) illegally stopped their pay,
even when they were signed off by their doctor.Illegal files on workers that break the data protection
act,yes the law of the land! Some of you guys have no idea the bully boy tactics that my friends have
had to endure from RM.

As to the present Tory party,the fact that the present shadow cabinet contains 16 Old Etonians should
show you just how representative of modern Britain they really are.Have they really changed?
As a former leading economist from the Bank of England commented, when questioned this week about
future Tory economic plans,"It's all designed to produce winners and losers".

What do you mean by illegal files?

Well I'm guessing if they break the data protection act then they fail one of the pointy thingies of it. I remember learning about shizzle like that. Err... Only kept for as long as it's relevant, up to date, the peeps give their agreement for everything held, secure, not given out without permission (think that comes under secure). All that shit. The copyright and patents side was more interesting.

bastard files

This doent apply to more specialised jobs that actually require skills such as like fireman, police etc but why dont they just get another job rather than moaning like fuck.  Working in a RM depot is no different from any other warehouse environment.

...apart from any other warehouse doesnt have those giant fucking nazis crozier and leighton at the helm, royally (no pun intended) fucking up the company.


we now have to take on a certain number of graduates as managers per year, so far we've had 2 in Dorcan, both were completely fucking innept and as welcome as a fart in a lift. both were removed from their jobs and given desk jobs so they couldnt fuck too much stuff up. and one of em looked like boris johnson too. but this was before it was cool to like boris :P



oh and during the rebuild they've got to take down a bloody big internal wall. rather than do the sensible thing and shut the warehouse for a day or two, maybe over a weekend or something, and divert the mail to other mail centres so the post isnt disrupted, and knock the fucker down ASAP. instead, they've put up huge plastic sheets on scaffolding that has halved our workspace, and they're drilling out the bricks one by one, so theres not too much dust being thrown up.

moan moan moan.

whats the problem about taking on graduates for management jobs?  Its what every other large company in the country does.

Of course the RM should be different and be run like its the 1950's.

I think the point that Leggett was trying to make was that the graduate's just weren't up to the job
and it was silly to have them in a supervisory position in the first place,with no experience within the
jobs market.My guess would be that RM have 'targets' and employing graduates at lower management
levels would be part of this.

Each and every one of us is entitled to view our personal files from the HR department.When a lower
ranked manager keeps files on his staff,from which they cannot be viewed or even challenged, then
that breaks the data protection act and is illegal.

It's also my understanding that morale within RM is very,very low and for experienced staff who worked
in good times,it must be soul destroying.Like all of us wherever we work,why shouldn't they be entitled
to some respect and dignity? A successful company has everyone pulling together and it's obvious that
within RM, there's a lack of leadership at local and national level.Crozier and Leighton were government
appointees as well as the regulator,who administors the market,perhaps they should be criticised for the
state of RM,rather the the postie/postal worker.

Some of us are fortunate to have good jobs and with good companies,but that doesn't entitle us to
belittle others who aren't in such a fortunate position.

I dont see anyone belittling anyone else here.

The fact is a lot of the RM moaners could easily get a job elsewhere, but they dont. Why is that?

the problem is being forced into employing people who arent suited to the job. surely we should be able to employ the best person for the job, but instead we have these unexperienced graduates forced upon us.


as for RM 'moaners' easily being able to get new jobs, alot of them are ex-forces, or of an age where finding a new job would be difficult, or have been in the business for 10/15/20 years. they are not likely to up sticks and go searching for a new job are they?

why not?  its a job not a prison sentance.  Who knows they might enjoy it more, get paid more or perhaps both.

if we're gonna start disecting quotes and ignoring the rest of the points, i'll join in too




you're not wrong. have a pat on the head and a buscuit :)

For some reason the public have always liked slagging of the RM. For me, I'll be prepared to be critical when some private company is able to deliver my letter to anywhere I choose in the country, 90% of the time within 24/36 hours, for less than 30p. Until then all the TNT's and what have you that bang on about public sector inefficiency can just shut the fuck up. I use courier companies regularly for business mail and I can tell you they are no more fucking reliable or user friendly than the post.

Everyone that thinks that competition and the market is the answer to every problem just needs to look at whats happening to the mail to see that it isn't the case.

Actually fuck that you can look at the rail, the buses, the utilities and the health service as well.

When services are natural monopolies because the sheer scale of infrastructure required to compete across the business is an effective barrier to market entry, pissing about with introducing elements of market forces in an artificial way (either by carving out profitable sectors of the business to be exposed to competition or offering massive subsidies or guaranteed income to private companies as incentives to invest in the sector) really does just fuck things up.

Oh and if I was a postie, with 20 years on the job and therefore probably little in the way of really saleable skills that are easily transferable outside the sector, and was therefore only looking at unskilled jobs as alternatives, I'd be staying on and bitching on t'internet as well. You ain't gonna get those pension rights working in fucking B&Q.

Come on now you're never going to make management level (cough NAZI SCUM spit!) with that sort of attitude are you?  ;)

Depends what job they did lumps, some would be more suited to other work than others.

Obviously the majority are pretty much unemployable elsewhere  ;), which coupled with the uber pension means thats why they dont leave. ever. they just irrate the general public by moaning, striking and resisting any change from 1950's working practices.

now thats a sensible post. good work, A+.




lumps, just out of curiosity, why do you use couriers for business post?


uber pensions? try 30% less of an 'uber' pension now they've implemented the changes. damn the man colin. Damn the man, save the empire!

when the royal mail is no more and the cost of sending items rockets,those that slate the service they currently get will be moaning even more.

What really fucks me off is that postman are contracted to work say from 9-5 or whatever there hours are. However my local sorning office are on a go slow because the mangers have said you have to work your hours no more doing your round then fucking off 3 hours early. If you finish your round you can do soemthing else useful. The union have said that it's memebr are being peniseled for working to quick!!! what other buinsess could you get away with the idea that you work yes work the hours you are paid for. Fuck me crazy man crazy new age busines shit that!

best typo ever.

Depends on the job.  If you work in a job where you need to cover a position for an amount of time (say in a shop) then working to time is what you do.  If you work in a job where you need to achieve something (like delivering letters) then you work until the task is completed.  Provided you are doing the job properly and not just emptying your sack in the box of the young lady at number 69 and going home, that should be fine.  Most jobs can be sorted out in to working to time or working to task.  I always work to task, my bosses have always known that I'll complete the work on time and accurately however late I need to work, but equally if I finish early, I'll do nothing.  Sounds to me like the Royal Mail management are being twats.

I think people grumble about RM because the service has gone downhill.

As for illegal files, you can only view information on your file after you submit a request in writing. Even then, there is particular information you can't view as an employee under the Data Protection Act.

Because a lot of the work I do is the writing, editing and supervising the physical production of business documents, ususally outline and full business cases for major capital developments. There's always a lot of fucking about with deadlines as contributors are ALWAYS late delivering thier elements of the work and so we're always working right up to deadline completing the damned things. As a result you've got to have someone that you can pay to park up outside reception and wait until you're ready to send out, and still guarantee to get the things where they're going on time.

As I say I know only too well that the buggers are not really much more reliable than the post. I had a courier on the phone one time having picked up the documents from our office in Wakefield unable to find the Department of Health offices in Quarry House in Leeds, one of the most distinctive and famous buildings in the city.

Bloody mail centre staff are always on strike!

I'm dreading it when our mail arrives from Swindon mail centre when Oxford closes.

We were briefed on friday morning about Swindon walking out, whats going on exactly?

 Probably Hereford away....there are a lot of STFC fans in Dorcan.

Swindontown Dave told me that he doesnt want to work or talk to Oxford or Reading fans.
True story, he told me at MK last week.

If you are finsihing your "task" early then your "task" is to easy for the alotted time therefore I would make your "task" longer so that you worked your fucking hours! It is called be effiecent and getting the most out of lazy people who wanna get paid eight hours pay for 6 hours work. however know doubt the unions lefty twats would call it slave driving.

If we ever face a national crisis ie war etc we are gonna be fucked your gonna have all the lefty union gimps saying no can't do that not in our contract no no we didn't do it that way etc etc etc lazy cunts.

 GFM...there were a couple of points raised further back down the thread, for you to answer, in the interests of open debate, you have failed to do so...this may be because you can't be arsed or, have no answers....either way, it does lay you open to accusations of being a typical right wing demagogue...shout often and loud enough any old bollockss and someone, somewhere might be stupid enough to listen.

I can't be arsed to read six pages, make noted and respond to each point. If however you would like to sum up the un answered points I would be happy to answer them.

posties dont skive off on computers when they are supposed to be working,they finish early instead in some cases.people in all jobs get what they can out of it. the strikes have not been about working to time alone.it is a whole catalogue of things.many will = a worse service for the customer.1 delivery a day,often coming later than the old second delivery used to is evidence of this.

That really pisses me off. They cut down to one deliverey a day to make sure we get our post nice and early. Now my post frequently fails to arrive before 2pm. Not impressive.

Maybe I didn't put my point across too well.  By the nature of these things work does not come in an even, steady stream.  Therefore, my point about being task focussed is that when there is a lot on I will work late, weekends to ensure the tasks are done for the time required.  Later on, when there is less to do, I will not create jobs just to look busy, I will go home and rest.  At no point will I ask for more money for working late or weekends as I will get to work less later on.  Clearly if I am always working late and at weekends then I am either being asked to do too much or I am not capable of doing my job properly.  Either way a good manager should work out the reasons and try to solve them.

Personally, I think we should move away from this obsession with how long we work.  As I said before unless you are in that type of job where you need to be somewhere for a period of time (say working on a checkout), then people should not be paid to work (or be seen to be working) a set number of hours, they should be paid to do a job.

To pick up your final point about war, the pilots in the Battle of Britain did not refuse to get in the planes and fly becuase they'd flown their allotted hours that week, they flew because they had a task to achieve.  I know how I'd rather have the men (and now women) defending my country working.

Donkey I admire your work eithic you seem to work hard and I don't know what you do. However I still feel that my point is valid I refuse to belive that everyone always finish all the work. It's just not possible. If we go back to the first post, it is seems that no-one ever checks the excel spreadsheets. So perhaps instead of going early once they have done their round they could do the excel thing? Even the seemingly most pointless task serve a perpuorse.

Also we seem to agree you should only be paid to do a task or the hours you work and if this happened with the post man I wouldn't care but they want it both ways. They want to only work say six hours but be paid for eight.

But then us the taxpayer are paying these people to sit around doing meaningless jobs

the tax payers are paying for posties?i think you will find royal mail has earned millions for the government.only investing that money badly has seen the business suffer.

oh i dont know. i put 6 and 17 together and must have got 32.

ralphy, the gist of the strike was;

- shitty working conditions (lots of dust flying about from the demolition, scafolding EVERYWHERE, closing off work areas and not moving those people effected to a big enough or suitable space)

- new staff joining the company or those moving from oxford and reading getting preference on holidays and jobs, completely doing away with seniority (nobody at dorcan has had their holiday forms yet, and with 600+ new jobs being created, a resign should be held, but the bosses are trying to avoid it as they cant be bothered to work it all out)


ralphy, why are you dreading the mail coming from swindon? look at the weekly/monthly figures, we rinse oxford mail centre pretty much every month. the only problem would be the 420 fucking it up...

Because Oxford is 20 miles from my delivery office and Swindon is 30!

We get the mail late now on a saturday so I dread to think what time it will arrive from Swindon.

I think we're close enough to an agreement here.  Perhaps if, every time other work was done, the excel spreadsheets were checked it wouldn't become such an arduous task.  And, of course, if people are always finishing early then something is wrong somewhere (the opposite to my comment about having too much work in fact).

 Royal Mail delivery times started going downhill when they dispensed with traditional collection. This is the way to do it....

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN9GxmtfX90

No wonder my mail order eggs were all smashed up.

 You had proper hen's eggs back then...not the fragile hormone induced crap you get now.

  An egg stamped with an English lion, could withstand a small thermo-nuclear explosion.
 
 

we're sposed to be getting these fancy new machines that'll sort it all out in half the time. fuck knows if we actually get them, we've got a couple of new sorting machines that are actually 20+ years old, which is nice. some of the machines used in the mail centre are so old that the company who made them have stopped making spares, so the engineers have resorted to ebay to find spares for it. fucking ridiculous.

The pc's at our delivery office have Windows 98 and Pentium processors.

State of the art 10 years ago!

Our place only just switched from NT 4.0 last year.