Now I don't do looking back and bemoaning, so bear with me again. The Royal Mail once along prided itself on getting the post through no matter what. There are legends of postmen battling through atrocious weather just to get the mail delivered. Delivery and a dependable service was the summation of the Royal Mail. Yes of course its service area is in steep, probably certain, terminal decline. Yes it was very unionised. Yes it had grown topsy-turvy whilst stuck in past methodologies unable to dig itself out. It had become a bloated shambles of what it was in its heydays.
Nowadays there are at least eight if not more rival couriers all making deliveries along my road. The Royal Mail undertakes to deliver first class but only within three working days, unless of course there are 'adverse conditions' when all bets are off. You are not in a position to query whether there has been a mis-delivery until a fortnight after the posting date. When Thatcher set about breaking up the Unions, breaking up nationalised industries and maximising her opportunities to create personal wealth and income for the Nation, her ruthless destructive tunnel vision of life did not encompass all the consequences. Yes, commercial competition was seen to be a good thing. However when you slice one more or less finite albeit large pie into lots of small slices the cream just get spread thinner. The more organisations there are, the more they have to do with less and chances of licking the cream become diminishing small. Not a scenario for improved service, not a scenario for reduced costs and if, in a saturated market, growth can only come from gobbling competitors then recovering a profit after those purchases is only going to be at the cost of pricing and service. There is no magic bullet waiting to transform by some significant factor the logistics of home deliveries, just small incremental steps with modest returns.
I am sure that her rush to generate wealth and thus her ability to control and benefit from the flow, did not anticipate the greedy, self-indulgent, to hell with the consequences culture that followed in tune and in step with it. Sweeping aside rectitude and tradition she also swept aside commitment, honour or putting other first before ones self. Necessary updating to a new era, maybe. The residual remainder we still have to deal and to come to terms with, is this endemic them and us. Compounded now by a prevailing selfishness, me first.
So looping back, the Royal Mail workers see themselves as in league against the management rather than seeing the need to work together to retrieve an organisation that has some prospect of surviving, by offering a cost efficient delivery and a dependable service. It is not of course just the Royal Mail. So few organisations offering services actually have any regard to the end users. They talk the talk but set aside the flyer's proclamations of how they regard you the customer, the actual interface beggars belief. Indifference, stonewalling, anything other than acceptance and providing the service promised is the de facto delivery. Maybe deep in the organisations psyche, their flyer is their truth. But at the human interface their representatives focus is on an easy life, keeping their particular nose clean, beyond reproach and certainly not to take on a problem and making it their personal objective, for the good of their company, that it is resolved. Instead it is always someone else's problem. Never the current person facing it. Off my desk and on to the next one, who cares. We do. We are all suffering from sloppy indifference, any easy fob off will do, avoid any risk of blame at all costs and lets keep raking in the money. As rewards only follow the money. Not just commercial organisations of course, but civic and governmental organisation are all prey, shrug off any inconvenient enquiry with the easiest first pat trite answer that does nothing. It is like after that excruciating twenty minute hold, you get to speak to IT support. Who seizes the first opportunity to say take the plug out and put it back in. If that does not cure it ring back! Cannot be faulted. So many problems are rooted in such blindingly obvious mistakes. My only problem is that the response totally ignores any tale of prior events and, rather then getting the plug and power switch checked for correct positions, dumps them at the earliest opportunity. This is a classic example of not taking responsibility for resolving the problem.
We cannot be bothered, so exquisitely and concisely put. Too many fingers in to many pies and too little time to check anything out and fault blame pressure to match some financially driven target. A selfishness and a weary acceptance that wrong is okay unless lots and lots of people get it. Jump on the bandwagon when it is truly rolling but until then, lay low, or it might cost you. In anycase nothing to do with me, it that other persons job to do something, not never mine.
It is each and everyone of us, our duty to stand up and say, this is not right. There is a better way. But more importantly, this is what I am doing to change it and can you help me please. Together we can overcome our problems and prepare for the future, working for each other so that the I can benefit. Together we can beat this culture of indifference. We care.
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