The Robert blog

Yup, it's another post regarding my favourite customer. He's the only person amongst my entire customer base who's so happy to be in my Post Office that as soon as he comes through the door he'll shout:

"Hello everyone, hello whatevernamehe'sdecidedtousetodayforme."

Thanks for the enthusiastic greeting and that but it's really annoying. Especially is there are 10 people queued up already. Can't he act remotely like a normal person and wait until he gets to the front of the queue before he says hello? Guess not. It also presents a bit of a dilemma. Am I rude to Robert by ignoring him or am I rude to the customer in front of me by shouting hello to the sad idiot who's just walked in? I've racked my brains for ages and can't think of a way of being rude to both of them. As it is, I generally ignore Robert unless there's a more annoying customer in front of me.

Also, quick note to Robert in case he's reading this. Just because you're wearing an enormous hi-vis vest on your enormous fat belly does not make it safe for you to drive your invalid carriage on the road.

The wrong way on a one-way road.

At night.

Regulars - Robert again

In what's becomig a Christmas tradtion, we got another Christmas card from Robert this year. No doubt, next time I see him, he'll carry on with another tradtion of his and that's not-so-subtly whining that we didn't send him a card back. I'm tempted to send him one next year to stop the moaning but I think that might make him think we're even more friendly than we are and mean that he'd spend even more time talking to us -Shudder-. He'd obviously gone to some effort with this card. Not only had he written inside that card at length, he'd enclosed an 8 page note. I hope he doesn't ask me anout the contents of this letter though. I tried my best to read it but the handwriting is almost illegible and what little you can make out is totally nonsensicle. You know you're not in for a literary masterpiece when the letter begins with PS. and has PS. beginning most sentences as well. Some of the other words that you can make out were post office. However, approximately 5% of the letter consisted of the words post office. I shoudln't be too mocking about this becuase he'd gone to a great deal of effort but he annoys me, he smells and I'm very intolerant.

And to top it all off, he sent a card to his brother but forgot to put a stamp on it so his brother had to come and collect it from me and pay a £1.40 surcharge. Hehe!

The customer is always unrealistic.

The annual Christmas rush has finally died down. Thank fuck for that. Even though the last posting dates for various countries were weeks ago, we're still getting a steady trickle of mail for far-flung destinations. The annoying thing is that customers are still expecting a card to get to Australia in time for Christmas. The last posting date for first class was yesterday for fucks sake. What are the chance of something getting down under in time? Fuck all.


Most customers don't mind too much when we tell them. Some, on the other hand, expect the moon on a stick and get the right areshole when we let them down. A guy came in today and asked if he sent a parcel first class, it'd be garunteed there tomorrow. When we told him no but he could send it special delivery for £6.30 he threw his toys out of the pram and stomped off saying that the service was pathetic. Jesus man, think about it for a second. First class doesn't always get there next day at the best of times. At christmas you're pretty much looking at 2-3 days if you're lucky. Please don't get on my case cos you're too stupid, lazy and ugly to organise yourself and get your cards out at a reasonable time. It's not as if Christmas arriving has come as a surprise at all. It happens every fucking year pretty much without fail.

"OH MY GOD!!! Christmas is on the 25th of December this year!!! And there hasn't been loads of warning in the form of adverts all over the place, Christmas sepcials on telly, Christmas cards arriving addresses to me and all of the other myriad of signals that I'd have to have totally fuckwitted in order to miss."

"D'oh"

All scousers are cunts and crooks.

Obviously this is a bit of a sweeping statement and you might disagree. I'm sure that there are some scousers out there who are honest and pleasant people but hear me out and I'm sure I'll bring you round to my way of thinking.

Exhibit A.

The only person who has been cashing an unemployment giro at my Post Office while (and I knew this for an unequivical fact) he had a job was a scouser. He was also trying to get a disabled sticker for his work van. Pretty iffy considering his job is installing TV ariels.

Exhibit B.

Last summer I was inundated with phone calls from companies in Liverpool demanding money for adverts that I'd never placed. Had I paid all of these demands, it would have set me back a couple of grand. Needless to say, I didn't pony up any dough. I recieved another of these phone calls today (hence the rant on this subject) and ended up hanging up before getting too wound up and demanding to speak to someone in authority, shouting at them, calling them a cunt and then telling them to fuck off and die in a fire like the last time. There are few things that are going to get me from sane to fucking livid as quickly as these crooks.

Exhibit C.

Carla Lane and her shit-coms.

I hope you'll agree that my case is strong enough to tar all scousers with the cunty-crook brush regardless of what they're actually like. Dole scrounging thieving shell suited bushy permed cunts the lot of 'em.

Christwe'rebusymas

It's probably no great revelation to say that Post Offices get a little busy in the run up to Christmas. Not wanting to sound ungrateful for the trade and therefore the money and stuff but fuck me I'm tired. And it's only day two of crazy week. Today it was stupidly busy but yesterday was certifiably bat-shit cover-yourself-in-your-own-poo-while-masturbating crazy. From 9:00 til 5:30 there wasn't a moment when there wasn't a queue in front on me (And that's not cos my name's Quentin or anything. Boom-boom). After yesterday, my patience and tolerance were already running very low. This wasn't helped by the emergency stamp order I'd put in as my scheduled orders had been either missed or delayed two weeks in a row being wrong. It's a good job this isn't the busiest time of the year and I'm not in danger of running out of anything. Oh shit.

Fortunately I managed not to lose it at anyone. Despite quite a few people winding me up. There are certain things that really get on my tits. Normally it doesn't bother me too much but you can imagine that given how busy we are, I'm gonna experience these things about a million times a day. Amongst them are:

People asking me how much things are going to cost to post and then saying "Are you sure?" When I tell them. YES OF COURSE I'M FUCKING SURE YOU COCKMONKEY. WHY DID YOU BOTHER ASKING IF YOU WEREN'T GOING TO TRUST THE REPLY. FUCK OFF.

When asking people to put a return address on the top left of all international mail (if you don't some countries return it. Hey, I don't make the rules) and then have someone say "It's on the back, is that OK?" Yes, I can see how you got "the back" confused with the top left on the front like I told you while pointing at that bit. Morons.

People moaning that their postman didn't ring their doorbell while trying to deliver a parcel and so they had to come and collect it therefore the postie must be lazy. Seriously people, think about it for a second. What's less work, waiting around for a minute and then handing over a parcel OR writing out a card and then cycling back to the sorting office still with the parcel. Twats.

A combination of being annoyed and tired means that my brain has stopped working properly as well. Something happened in the Post Office today. It was an old saying literally happening. It reminded me of the time that I saw a blind fellow being led into the Post Office by another blind guy. Yep, I have literally seen the blind leading the blind. Sadly, whatever it was that happened today has completely vanished out of my mind. Dribble, drool etc.

Regulars - update

A quick update on a couple of the regualrs I've mentioned before.

Robert.
Robert's been getting my name right pretty consistently this week. It started off with him using my real name for a change. After that he used the right name and then said

"Oh, I'm sorry Wrongname. I've been calling you Rightname when you're name's actually Wrongname isn't it."

Disheartened with this quick changearound I was just about to correct him when he went back to using my real name again. My head was spinning with the speed which he changed the way he addressed me. I can't even remember what my real name is now. Thanks Robert, you addled old twat.

Scott.
In the last two weeks, Scott's mental condidtion has clearly deteriorated. He came in to collect his mail the other day as normal. Due to staffing shortages though, it wasn't ready and wasn't likely to be ready until the afternoon. We told him this and sent him on his way. Not ten minutes passed and he returned and aksed for his mail. we told him that it wouldn't be ready until the afternoon and sent him on his way again. Another half an hour passed and he returned and asked whether he's collected his mail yet as he couldn't find it. Nope. It's still out back, unsorted like we told you twice already.
This morning he came in for another bus timetable (surprisingly, the first one of the week). As we're so accomodating and helpful, we passed one to him. Five minutes later he returned, looking a bit confused. I was just about to reach down to get him another timetable (see, I'm so considerate of my customer's needs, I can even anticipate them and get in there first. Just call me superpostmaster) when he produced the one he'd been given earlier. Shocked as I was that he'd actually managed to keep a timetable for longer than the customary minute that they usually seem to last, I composed myself and awaited his request.

"You'll probably think me really silly for asking this."

No more than I already do.

"I just can't work out this timetable, I need to get to the local metropolis by 11 o'clock and I can't work out which bus to take"

Actually, I do think slightly less of you now. Who'd have thunk it?

I put him straight and circled the time he needed to catch his bus. Tempting as it was to either make him late or send him off on the wrong bus for shits and giggles, I'm just far too nice for that.

You gotta laugh.

A customer made us all laugh today (when he'd gone of course). A smelly gypsy came in to cash his giro cheque.

"I'm sorry about the shaky signature, too much medication."

Too much no booze more like. Also, why the need to apologise for a shitty signature? Some of the other gypsies don't seem embarressed by not being able to write very well on their cheques. One of them can't even manage a tick. Too much information from a customer usually means one of two things.

1. They're old and feel the need to tell you their life story.

2. They're up to something iffy.

In this case, he must have not wanted to give away the fact that he's off to spend his benefit money on sweet, sweet booze.

The customer is always patronising.

Now that the Christmas rush has begun we're getting a lot of overseas cards. For some reason, customers can't hand me a batch of cards and let me get on with stamping them up. Naah, that would be easy, quick and not nearly insulting enough. It's especially true with old people that they can only hand foreign cards to me one at a time while telling me where they're destined for. Even after I ask them to hand them all over in one go, they just can't resist passing them singly, "this one's for France. So's this one. And this one. And this one."

I CAN FUCKING WELL READ YOU KNOW!!!!!!!! IT'S KIND OF NECESSARY IN THIS FUCKING JOB!!!!!!!!!

MORON!!!!!

Why they expect me to take a card from them, turn around, weigh it, stamp it, turn back, take another one, turn around, weigh it etc etc for each card I really don't know. It's a little bit quicker to do the lot in one go. It's really starting to get right on my tits. Especially when there's a big fucking queue and they've got a big fucking pile of mail. Hrrrmmmggghh!! Tossers.

Pants on Fire

I told an inadvertent fib in my last post. I have lost my temper at one other customer. During another busy morning filled with rude customers and hassle and annoyances I encountered the rudest customer ever. It wasn't actually her that I lost it towards but she nearly tipped me over the edge. One more rude customer without a suitable cooling off period (and ideally a scotch) would be all it takes to send me off on one. Predictably enough, two minutes later a rude customer came in.

Her car was parked out front in such a way that it was blocking the entire road out there. It was the first time I'd seen someone manage to park on the double yellow lines on both sides of the road. It was quite spectacularly selfish, lazy, illegal and potentially dangerous. When I asked her if she could move her car she told me that her husband was still parked in it. I told her that was irrelevant because it was still causing a major obstruction and there was a perfectly good car park literally 50 yards down the road that also happened to be totally free and very rarely full. She told me that as she was only popping in to post one letter she didn't see the point of parking properly. I responded with a bit of a lecture (no shouting or obvious stroppiness) about how she was blocking access to my business, that the car was parked next to a lowered piece of kerb that wheelchair users and pram pushers need in order to cross the road safely, that my neighbours are being prevented from getting to their houses and how difficult was it to park out of the way? At this point she got a little upset and said that she was returning from hospital and her treatments made her weak and she's got a disabled badge and aaahh, poor her.

I could have pointed out that disabled badges don't allow you to park on double yellows. I could have told her that if she was so ill, she could have got her husband to park in the car park and come in himself. I could have carried on with several other things I wanted to say. I didn't. I'd already figured out that I wasn't going to win this one and perhaps the best thing to do would be serve her and get her out of the door as soon as possible. I gave her a half-arsed "sorry" and then sold her a stamp.

Three weeks later, I received a letter from her moaning about my attitude, how if Post Offices are doing so badly then I should be grateful and polite to everyone that comes in, complaining that her treatment for cancer makes her feel really ill and just two pages of whinging and whining and could I write her an apology please? I mentally filed it under "Can't be bothered to do anything about" and carried on. Another few weeks pass and I get a phone call from customer services about this woman. She'd sent them a copy of this letter and then chased it up with them when she didn't get a reply from me. I fobbed off customer services, "yes, I'll send her an apology honest." I promptly didn't bother. A month or so passes and I get another phone call from customer services. This time I told them I had no intention of apologising because although she had a bit of a lecture I wasn't rude or angry (outwardly) and she was dangerously and illegally parked. This seemed to get customer services off my back. Two years later, I've not heard anything else so I reckon I've got away with it. She's probably dead. Result for me!