Saturday 21 November 2009

Gah! Post! Rubbish! Grrr!

Until about 10.15 this morning I was broadly supportive of the Royal Mail strike action.  I mean, clearly I don't actually know anything about this:  we buy the papers at the weekend but I can't say that I tend to spend the ten minutes I (on average) have actually to read them studying the ins and outs of postal industrial action. I'm more of a skim through the political stuff, read the family section, cut out the recipe sort of girl.  Don't bother with the fashion any more either, but that's probably another story.

Anyway, as I say, from a position of very little knowledge I kind of felt sorry for your average postie. I'd read a couple of articles (see? I do know something about it!) by posties putting their point of view (significantly more articulately than our personal postie would have done mind) and I could see where the grievances came from.  I sympathised with the "last mile" predicament, and I'd huffed and puffed about the inaccurate techniques for measuring the weight they're carrying. I even felt strongly enough in support of them to have a mild disagreement with my friend EB about it.  She won; but then she normally does.

Well not any more.

I came downstairs at 10.10 this morning to find one of those little red cards on the doormat:

"Sorry, you were out. We called at 10.15".

Well, sorry too, but we weren't and you didn't. We were here, all five of us.  Admittedly upstairs, but the house isn't so big you don't hear the thunderous battering ram knock of your average postman wherever you are. And there was no knock.

And, quite frankly, nor did you call at 10.15.  Unless that little red van is also a time machine.  Because it's not actually 10.15 yet, sunshine, and I've been standing here for at least a minute swearing at the thought of having to take three small children up to the "conveniently located" delivery office a 45 minute walk away on Monday morning.

So I thought I'd stick my head out to see, if, perchance, the chronologically-challenged one was still there.  He was, idling away in his red time machine just outside our door.  I shrieked and waved (in a ladylike manner naturally).  Only to watch him drive away.  Taking my parcel with him.

Or not. If you believe, which I am rapidly learning to, that they never have the parcels with them anyway.

4 comments:

  1. the amount of times when a parcel has actually been delivered when I'm at home, regardless of whether or not I was actually there, I believe a lot of the time they fill the forms in at the office and leave the dratted parcels behind.

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  2. I have actually caught the postie out before and they have admitted that they didnt have it. But I have to say that the lady who drives the van on our local route with the pacels in is fantastic. She will knock and check the door too!

    However, my mum lives on a main road with poor parking and she never gets her parcels. I always have to drive and collect them as her sorting office is not on a public transport route

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  3. Yes I've heard about this, sometimes if they have too many parcels they don't take them with them because they would need a bigger van. So instead you get a card and have to pick the parcel up yourself. In which case I think they should pay you some of the postage. Our postman makes me laugh, he's very grumpy and because I'm usually around in the day he asks me to sign for neighbours' post quite often. And while I'm doing that I hear all about his woes such as rainy weather and the missis. He has a hard life (in his opinion).

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  4. You sure you don't live down my road? I don't think our postie knows how to bring a parcel from the van to a door!

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I know. I'm sorry. I hate these word recognition, are you a robot, guff things too, but having just got rid of a large number of ungrammatical and poorly spelt adverts for all sorts of things I don't want, and especially don't want on my blog, I'm hoping that this will mean that only lovely people, of the actually a person variety, will comment.

So please do. Comments are great...