Friday 5 March 2010

The Post Office people

'phoned me yesterday. I had, after some hesitation, put in a complaint about our parcel delivery person. He has not being doing the job properly. The situation was made more difficult by the fact that his English is very poor.
Parcels are supposed to be delivered to the door. If they can be placed in a letter box they will come as 'letter mail' rather than 'parcel mail'.
Unlike many people we have a good sized letter box because we still get not only snail mail but large snail mail envelopes from time to time. The problem is that the letter box is almost large enough to fit a small book parcel into as well - please not 'almost'. The parcel will have to sit upright with the lid of the letter box wide open to the elements and the potential for theft. This has happened several times.
I caught the parcel delivery person on one occasion and asked him politely not to do this. I explained about parcels getting wet. I explained about the potential for theft. He did not - or pretended not to - understand. While I was explaining this I also politely pointed out that he does not have the legal right to drive down the wrong side of the street. He argued with me over that. According to him the postal delivery van has every right to drive down the wrong side of the street.
Safety first demanded that I speak to his supervisors. I left a message on line. I made no mention of his (in)ability to use English. My message was very carefully worded. It took three weeks to get a reply. They left a message telling me they would speak to him. The telephone call yesterday was to say that they were in the process of 'counselling' him. . My guess is that the situation will remain the same or we will get a new delivery person.
What we would really like is our previous delivery person to return. We knew her quite well, well enough for her to arrive on a very hot day with her empty water bottle and a request to be allowed to refill it from our tank. The problem is that she was so good at her job they have moved her own to higher duties. I have a nasty feeling she may be the person who will have to try and retrain the present person. I wish her well. It is clear that he does not like taking orders from the opposite sex.

2 comments:

Holly said...

Postal delivery being another of those "lower status and high labor" jobs that is not viewed with favour by natives?

catdownunder said...

Poddibly - although we did have a wonderful native that we knew by name and who knew us well enough to get marmalade from me. Sigh.