It has to be one of the easiest jobs there is. Its basically a grown-up version of a paper round. All you have to do is take the item, be it an envelope or a small package, and put it through the letterbox that has been carefully placed on the front door for their convenience. I dont mean to offend Royal Mails finest, but being a postman is not rocket science.
<*dv_1*> Sure, you have to get up early in the morning, and not all dogs take kindly to postmen, which can make their lives difficult; but the basic concept of their job is relatively simple: take item, post item through letterbox.
With this in mind, I couldnt help but smile yesterday. The previous day, I had returned from work to find one of their cards on the ground, to say that there was an item for me to collect from them because they had been unable to deliver. The box ticked on the card stated that item wont fit.
I had been expecting items to arrive from Play.com, so I knew that this was what the parcel was. However, I was a little perplexed because Play.com will usually package each item you order separately, regardless of how many items you order at once. My order was for a couple of DVDs and CDs; therefore, there was no reason why they wouldnt have been able to fit the packages through the letter box.
I assumed that things must have changed, and on this occasion, Play.com had decided to put everything in one parcel.
Anyway, yesterday morning I went along to their collection office. After ringing the bell for attention, I was greeted by a knuckle-dragging beast of a human being, which may have been a woman. The woman unleashed a Neanderthal-like primal scream that resembled the words can I help?
<*dv_3*> I handed over the card, trying not to look directly at her in fear of provoking the beast. She searched around for a little while, and then produced the item that had been deemed too big to deliver.
To my surprise, Play.com had not sent me one big parcel. Instead, they had used separate packets for each item, as usual.
So why had these been classed as too big to deliver? Because an elastic band had been placed around the five separate padded envelopes. Thats right, an elastic band holding the items together had stopped the postman from being able to deliver them.
<*dv_2*> Instead of removing the elastic band and posting each item separately, the postman had chosen to take time to fill out a card and post that. Obviously, this guy had missed the day of training when they dealt with the removal of elastic bands.
I couldnt help but smile as I thought of the recent Royal Mail adverts where they go on about how much they care, as they deliver words to people. Thank God no one had been inconsiderate enough to put a sentence together with elastic bands, or the advert would have been a disaster!
Lee
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