Royal Mail – The Inside Scoop

Want to know how Royal Mail treat their customer’s parcels…?

Read on!!

I started working at my local Royal Mail depot yesterday. The way I was started there was a car crash – no one knew who I was, where to put me, or what to do with me. I got asked several times if I was agency staff…

Anyway, that’s a separate issue. What I was keen to find out was what happens to all the parcels passing through the place for a Sunday delivery – not least after the recent expose on Hermes. I was put in among the mad rush to grab the parcels off the roller belt and sort them into their postcoded cages. What I witnessed whilst in amongst the scrum, was parcels ….being placed perfectly nicely into the cages. Nothing kicked, nothing thrown. Sorry!! It was slick and felt like some glossy promo video.

Their training is a lot less impressive – but that was probably down to the fact that no manager was in the building that day. I was helped to load up the van, rather less than patiently, by this bloke. He took a good few seconds to show me what to do with the PDA when I got there, then said “off you go”. Christ. Now since I’d been scanning in the depot when both organising them for the manifest, and then when organising them to load onto the van, I naturally assumed you’d scan them off when delivered to the customer. Eventually found the first house, looked like a total idiot trying to scan the parcel off as delivered. Nothing happened. The customer was extremely patient with me when I explained it was my first day. In the end I just gave up and pretended it had gone through.

Got back in my Royal Mail van and thought okay…either I carry on and make Royal Mail look like total idiots, or I drive the other 39 parcels back to the depot and ask for some help.

I chose the latter. The bloke who had helped me load up the van flicked his head back as I followed him to the duty manager like when you’re saying “pfft, look at this idiot”. FUCK you, man. Of course you’re going to think it’s simple when you’ve already been doing it for years. Turned out – I didn’t NEED to scan the parcels on delivery. I just swipe right on the delivery then tap to confirm delivered to customer. So I felt like an idiot – but I didn’t, at least, make Royal Mail look incompetent.

I really did have a nice day. Very glad when it was over. But it wasn’t torture doing it. According to the fellow postman I went out with, there is actually only 1 drop off of parcels to the centre on a Sunday. This might change on weekdays, and I suppose then it would be more pressured, and less enjoyable. But even then, from what he was saying about it all, Royal Mail do not seem to run on pressure – they run on delivering parcels professionally, not leaving them out in plain sight on people’s completely accessible doorsteps (like I found one delivery company had done) and treating them with respect when they’re in the centre.

I’ve also NEVER in my life had so many people pleased to see me in 1 day!!