Strangest Lost Property Ever.

I know some of the proles around here are a bit inbred and wierd and all but can someone please explain the lost property I recovered from one customer today.

Two gloves.

Both different.

Both right handed.

I'm Sorry, We're Closed. Now Fuck Off!

Some customers just can't take a hint. One such idiot visited my Post Office last Saturday.

Regrettably (or not) he turned up at twenty-five to one, five minutes after we has closed. I'd had a busy morning and so I needed to do a few end of day jobs that usually get done in the last half hour but because of all the inconsiderate bastards coming in at the last minute I needed to stay at work a bit later to finish 'em all off.

Now, the hints were there. The door was locked, the sign read closed, the lights were switched off, the shop was empty (apart from me obviously) and once he'd knocked on the door I shook my head at him and mouthed "We're closed."

Clearly this wasn't enough for this particular shit-wit.

He proceeded to stand there like a twat for the next eight minutes (I timed it).

There was no way I was going to go to the door and tell him that I wasn't going to open up as I guessed he wouldn't be too happy at that and, season of goodwill and all, I didn't want to have to be rude to him in order to spell it out that we were closed.

While he was standing out there, one of the posties rode past and said that the post office was closed. The idiot's reply was "You don't have to tell me that." Oh really? Well, why was he still standing there?

Eight minutes later, the penny finally dropped and he buggered off. He obviously had been riled by the pointless wait as he got back in his car and tyre squealed off.

A further ten minutes passed and he returned. If I was unlikely to open the door previously, then there was nooooooo chance that I'd open it later. However, picking up his parcel wasn't his motive for returning.

He got out of his car, came over to the door and stuck a piece of paper to it. On closer inspection (when he'd gone again obviously) it turned out that it said "And a happy Christmas to you too".

There are several things wrong with his behaviour. Firstly it transpired that even if I had opened the door for him, his parcel hadn't been returned by that time anyway.

It also turned out that he'd hassled another postman earlier to try to get his parcel and moaned that he'd spent extra money to get it delivered on a Saturday and he desperately needed it. Well, if it was that important, why the fuck didn't he wait in for it?

Why did he feel the need to wait outside for so long? He should have take the hints and fucked off as soon as he realised that we were closed.

Finally, exactly what did he think he was going to achieve with that childish little note on the door? Did he think that he's going to get better service next time he's in? I bloody well hope not as he's in for another disappointment. As I know who he is and where he lives, I'm going to go out of my way to make sure that he gets shittier service next time he's in.

So, the moral of this tale is that if you act like a cunt to shop/post office people, we will remember you and we will have our revenge. It may be subtle but it will happen. It's amazing just how bad a service I can provide while still staying well within the rules.

Back Again (Briefly).

Just a quick note to report yet another piece of Post Office Ltd utter fuckwittedness.

Now, as you may be aware it's coming up to Christmas. Traditionally a time when people send a lot of cards to each other. Most people tend to use second class post as they usually are sending out quite a few cards and they're looking to save a bit of money. Selfish bastards, they should send everything first class or ideally special delivery in order to make me a few quid.

Anyway, our stocks of Christmas second class stamps were looking a bit depleted so we put in an order for some normal second class stamps, some books of second class stamps and some books of 100 second class stamps.

Then we waited the whole week that Post Office Ltd seems to think is an appropriate time to deliver an order. Bear in mind that the order is placed on our computers so they should have it as soon as we've finished placing the order. Also, the stock comes with out weekly cash delivery so it's not like it needs to take two or three days in the post either.

Oh dear. Something seemed to be missing when the order arrived. Can you guess what it is?

Yup, not a single second class stamp. No normal ones or even any books.

As I write this, we're now pretty much sold out of all of our second class stamps. It's not as if we've fucked up. We placed the order in good time and it wasn't even for an excessive amount. Post Office ltd have once again demonstrated that they really can't be trusted to run this business anywhere except into the ground.

And just a quick update about the last posting date leaflets. They arrived on the 3rd November. After all of the useful surface mail dates had passed by a country mile.

In case I don't do any more posts in the next few weeks, Have a shitty Christmas. I will.

I'm still here

Just a quick hello to reassure you that I'm not dead or sacked or anything. With the run-up to Christmas (yes, I am fully aware that it's only just November) in full swing, I've been a bit too busy to devote time to writing this blog just for the half dozen or so people who read it.

Just to make you happy though:

I'm annoyed about some person/Royal Mail behaving in some fuckwitted way. Arsecakes.

There we go, one standard blog entry condensed into one easy sentence.

There will be more updates coming. Honest.

So, Christmas Is When Exactly?

Royal Mail have managed to excel themselves this year.

Normally, we're sent the posters and leaflets for the last posting dates for Christmas at some point during September. Given that the dates for surface mail for some countries are the beginning of October, this is about right timing-wise. In fact, we pretty much rely on getting these leaflets as a good indication that it's the right time to start putting a few items of Christmas stuff out for sale. It's true to say that I've been taking it for granted that these leaflets will be here at the right time every year and therefore don't really bother to think about putting my Christmas stuff out until I get them.

D'oh!!!

I've started to notice (on the few occasions that I'm let out of here) that some places are starting to get the Christmas tat out already. I hate utterly shops that ram Christmas down your throat from September onwards so I've been delaying putting our stock out. One of my antipodean friends go me thinking though. She mentioned that even though the last date for down under is about three months prior, she always misses it.

"Hmm?" Thinks I, "It's less than three months until Christmas and I've seen hide nor hair of these posting dates. I'll have a look online."

One quick bit of web surfing later and I've found out that the last posting date for Australia was the first of October. Sadly, that was the date for 2008 and that was the most up to date information I could find from the Royal Mail website.

So, first things first, I got Christmas tat corner ready and out on display in the shop.

The next thing to do was try to find the dates. Fortunately, Royal Mail actually beat me to it and sent a memo round to us. However, this memo didn't bother to tell us the dates. It just told us that the leaflets would be delayed until the end of October and could we all stop phoning the helpline to ask about them. It did tell us where we could find the dates so I looked 'em up and here they are for your entertainment and information:

Everywhere in the world not otherwise mentioned:
1st October

Far East and Middle East
6th October

South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, USA, Canada
20th October

Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Iceland
10th November

The rest of Europe
24th November

So, to sum up, we won't be telling our customers when the last surface mail posting dates are until nearly all of them have passed. When you consider that no-one ever sends stuff to anywhere in Europe surface mail as it's rarely cheaper and sometimes more expensive than airmail, that's a bit fucking useless really.

Much like Royal Mail really.

Oh For Fucks sake

I'm currently listening to some old bastard wittering on about the history of his typewriter and how long it's lasted and how much better and quicker than computers it is and blah blah blah blah blah. All because he's after some tipp-ex thinners cos the last lot he bought has run out and his tipp-ex has gunked up and he normally buys thinners and tipp-ex together and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Sorry, nodded off there he was so dull.

Fortunately, it was a colleague dealing with him but it was dull enough from here.

He should have just taken the response that the thinners are banned now and fucked off. We didn't need his life story and how it pertains to typewriters.

I Wish The Government Would Grow Some Balls

Without an intervention from the government, the Post Office is ultimately destined to die a slow and expensive death.

Granted, we get a subsidy from them to keep open non-profitable branches in rural and deprived areas but this subsidy won't last forever and is kind of missing the point.

It would take a bit of political balls to implement as they would be a cost involved and no immediate and tangible pay off but the way forward is a Postbank.

There are a good few reasons why this would be a winner.

Firstly, it would help combat financial exclusion. A lot of the proles out there can't get bank accounts from the major high street banks. One of the main reason is that the banks don't like to publicise the basic accounts they do (ie. the accounts which only allow withdrawals if you're in credit, don't allow cheques, standing orders etc) as they're a loss maker. Granted Post Office Ltd would need to subsidise these accounts but it would help some of the poorest people actually get a foot on the financial rung. It would help save them money as they'd be able to get money out from the post office without being charged per withdrawal (the most deprived areas of Britain have the largest amount of fee-incurring cash machines) and it would help them get a credit rating and allow wages and benefits to be paid in directly. Granted very few of these shit-munchers would actually have jobs so it would be mostly benefits being paid in but, heh, you never know, one or two of them might get jobs.

Secondly, it would help restore confidence in the banking sector again. Currently, people don't trust the major banks as they've all been shown to be greedy, risk-taking, lying, money grabbing bastards. They've been bailed out with billions of tax payer money that we're all going to have to pay back some way or another. Thanks to them, we're going to have reduced public services and higher taxes for years to come. Despite this, the banks are rapidly returning to their high risk, huge bonus and non-lending culture. Given that we own a lot of the banks, you'd have thought that someone in power would have had a quiet word with them and told the bastards to sort it out. Fat fucking chance. I'm not saying that a Postbank would be a hell of a lot better but it's worth a stab.

Thirdly, it would help secure the Post Office network. If we had a bit more business then there'd be fewer non-profitable branches and we'd need less of a subsidy and everything would be hunky-dory. As it is, they'll be a gradual decline in the size of the network and by the time someone thinks to do something about it, it'll be too late to reverse the trend. Sadly, government and Post Office management seem to be happy managing a slow decline rather than giving the business a kick up the arse and getting it going again. Some of the things that management are doing are a step in the right direction but it's all a bit too half-arsed to turn things round properly.

Finally, (and this is the most important reason) it would make me more money.

So if you want to help make me richer, go to the number 10 petition site and sign up.

The quick off the mark award goes to...

Post Office Ltd.

We finally got a memo the other day regarding the fact that our special delivery labels aren't sticky.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

A couple of points to mention here.

Special delivery is supposed to be our most secure service. If the label with the bar code falls off during transit, that makes it rather hard to track and, I'm guessing, makes it a bit less secure.

Also, does no-one at the factory that makes these things have any quality control? Did nobody notice that a shit load of these labels don't actually stick which is kind of their raison d'etre?

We've known about this problem in branch for over a month now. Why did it take so long for Post Office ltd to send out a memo about it (answer, they're shit).

Finally, we've not had a memo regarding the recorded delivery labels that don't stick either.

Fucking marvellous.

Top Deaths

Considering that most old people are a fall away from shuffling off this mortal coil, they are obsessed with death. Most notably, the death of their peers.

Sadly, one of my colleagues seems to share this morbid fascination.

As soon as one of the coffin-dodgers ceases to dodge the coffin, there's a mad rush to tell as many people in as excrutiating and unnecessary detail as possible. And once the initial news of the death has been disseminated, then there's al of the gossip about the wills, the funeral or any skeletons the deceased may have in their closets.

At times, it's like listening to a bunch of kids playing top trumps as they try to outdo each other with details regarding the stiff.

"Ooooh, did you hear about Doris?"

"Doris? No. What about Doris?"

"She died last night."

"Last night? Really? What happened?"

"Oooh, well, it's not for me to gossip, but she had a stroke."

"A stroke, yes. Well, I never."

"Yes, it was terrible. Her husband is soooooo upset."

"Upset, yes. Well, have you heard about Mavis."

"No. Is she OK?"

"OK, yes. No."

"Ooooh, what's wrong with Mavis?"

"Mavis, yes. She finally succumbed to her backside cancer."

"Oooh, Really."

"Really, yes. Whatever will happen to her pussy?"

And so on and so on. Often until one of the conversationalists dies themselves mid scentence and the whole cycle begins anew.

I know I'm a Genius, But.....

Some customers seem to expect an inordinate amount of knowledge from us. Most of which involves forecasting the future.

The most common request I get for my Nostradamus impression are from idiots who fret too much about changing currency.

It's usually the old folk who know that they're off on holiday in a month or two. They'll come in and ask the exchange rate for whatever currency they're after. Whatever we tell them will usually elicit a response along the lines of "Well, that's not very good is it? Do you think the rate is going to get better in a few weeks?"

Frankly, if I could predict the foreign exchange rates weeks in advance do you think I'd be working in a Post Office? No, of course I wouldn't. I'd have retired to my own desert island and spend my days snorting coke off some supermodel's tits while my army of solid gold robot monkey butlers attended to my every other whim that didn't involve sexual acts (well, except for a little light robot monkey butler buggery but you can't help that really).

For some reason, the kind of person who will ask me to predict the future in this way is exactly the kind of person who can't accept that I might not know. Even when I explain to them in very simple language that it's nigh on impossible for me to know. Obviously, this isn't good enough for some of them but, fuck 'em. Twats.


Car tax is often a source of stupidity from customers too. This is an actual conversation I had with a customer:

Customer:"How much will it cost to tax my car for a year?"

Me:"I can't say unless I know the age of the car, it's engine size and it's emissions."

Customer:"It's a ford."


Another main instance of customers expecting me to read minds or just generally being omniscient is when they phone up and the first thing they say is:

"You've got a parcel there for me. What is it?"

Where to start with this multi-layered twattery? Firstly, you've not even told me your address so it's kind of impossible to locate your parcel. Secondly, most parcels tend to have some sort of wrapping which is generally opaque which prevents me from seeing what's in them. Why don't you just get your lazy fat arse off the fucking sofa and stop ordering shit from QVC and whatnot then you might be able to keep track of all of the shiny things what the telly told you to buy that you neither need or can afford. Then you might stop being so poor. Just a suggestion.


Finally comes another stultifyingly stupid thing which people say far too often.

"I've got to send X item. How much will it cost?"

When I ask them how much it weighs or, even where it's going (often people will entirely forget to mention that it's going to another country and then be totally flabbergasted that the price quoted for inland second class is not accurate) it's actually quite rare that they'll have a clue. When I point out that this makes working out a price impossible I'm often told that I'm not doing my job properly.

So, to sum up, customers are fucking stupid and expect far too much of even someone as intelligent and good looking as I am.

Twats.

The Fuck You Bag

When we've stamped up an item of mail for a customer it has to be put into the correct mail sack.

In order to help out the lazy bastards that sort the mail, we have to do a half-arsed pre-sort of the mail. There are four different sacks that we have to file things in. First class packets, second class packets, priority mail and everything else.

How exactly that makes much of a difference to the amount of sorting hat the mail centre monkeys have to beats me but there you go. No doubt some manager came up with the idea in order to pay lip service to cost savings and also to help justify his existence.

Anyway, we have a fifth bag. It's not as well-used as the other mail bags but it is very important.

It's the Fuck You Bag.

It's sole purpose is to have mail in that we want to delay. When we have our last collection of mail in the afternoon, we're supposed to make sure that everything we've been handed goes off so it gets to it's destination asap. For some inexplicable reason, the Fuck You Bag seems to hide until just a little too late so it has to go out the next day.

There are a few crimes that you can commit and have your mail put in the Fuck You Bag.

The first is being one of several annoying customers. There are a few regulars who's mail generally goes in the Fuck You Bag. Not all of their mail ends up in the Fuck You Bag, even the most fuck-witted would notice that it never arrives next day. Nope, we only select whatever looks the most important and hold that back.

The next crime is being too over eager for your mail to get into today's collection. If you come in at 9:30 in the morning and ask me whether you've missed the last mail collection already, then I'm afraid even though you're on time, you mail is going in the Fuck You Bag. I mean, please exercise some common sense here. If we're open until 5:30 then (despite the general shitness of Royal Mail) it's fairly likely that there's gonna be a later collection than 9:30. Sadly, far too many people ask this question so over to you Fuck You Bag.

The final thing that's gonna get your mail delayed is the most annoying (from my point of view). If you come in here and tell me that your item of mail must get there the next day or else without fail and then you decided that special delivery (our guaranteed next day service) is too expensive and then you can guess where your item of mail is going. Yup, the Fuck You Bag. It may seem petty but I'm trying to teach you a lesson. If you want something there the next day, then pay for the right service. Tight arses.

The HMRC Website is Shite

Don't ask why, it'd be too dull for words. Just take my word for it that it's fucking shite.

A more cynical person than me would suggest that it's deliberate so they can charge people for failing to submit returns in time even though there were done over a month early and they didn't bother to tell me that the form had been bounced.

Wankers.

Why Royal Mail/Post Office is Fucked part II

I was going to keep this to a one part special but some things have happened that have managed to break through my icy cool demeanour and annoy me a bit. Because that's very difficult to do you understand.

Firstly, the union seem to be hell bent of going through with more strikes just because they've been told that the posties will have to do a reasonable amount of work for a change.

What riles the buggery fuck out of me is that being a postman is actually really well paid for unskilled labour. If they're willing to put the hours in, work hard and do plenty of overtime a postman can easily earn over £30,000 per year. Not bad for fuckwits really.

It's just a crying shame that a lot of the work force aren't hard working. There are plenty that work at the minimum speed possible and then moan that they can't finish the round in their allotted time. You could understand if they have a particularly big/hard round but no. Some of the rounds that my posties do are fucking easy. I can tell this as the relief posties who cover time off seem to finish them really rather quickly without exerting themselves to death. Yet are these people listened to when it comes to reworking the rounds to make them fairer? What do you think?

The answer is no.

The only people who are listened to when it comes to reworking the rounds are the lazy moany ones. The sort who spend half their time on the phone to management complaining that they can't get the round finished in the allotted time.

One thing that doesn't get taken in to account, seemingly ever, is the fact that if the posties finish early then they can go home. It's far more common that they finish early and get to bugger off two hours early than they're busy and need to stay a bit later.

So, to conclude, Posties, you don't know how lucky you are. Or at least you don't yet but given a few more strikes and Royal Mail will gradually slide down the shitter and you'll all be fucked. You wait until there's a glut of unemployed posties out their and just see how good the wages and working conditions you're offered are. I'll give you a hint, they'll be fucking shit compared to what you've got now.

Then we get to Post Office management. I think I'll save my bile on this subject for another post but I'll give you a few excerpts below:

"Twats"

"incompetent"

"waste of space"

"the"

My Neighbour Is a Lovely, Lovely Man

You know when you've moved next to a fantastic neighbour when the first time you meet him, he's shouting and swearing at you because a Royal Mail van is parked in our shared driveway. Especially as Royal Mail vans have been parking in said driveway for years and years and he knew that full well when he moved here.

You could understand his annoyance if he was being blocked in/out for excessive periods of time or if he needed to get out, the posties refused to move the vans.

What I can't really understand is why the stupid twunt feels the need to come out every time someone is parked in the drive regardless of whether he's going anywhere or not.

Since I've been here we've even reduced the amount of times vans park in the drive. It's only once per day while unloading first thing in the morning. So he's actually had about a 90% reduction in the amount of Royal Mail vehicles that may potentially block him in.

Another thing I can't understand is the way he acts whenever he feels he's blocked in. Instead of asking politely for the offending driver to move, his first persuasive weapon of choice is shouting and swearing and generality acting like a fucking cunt.

I've always tried to diffuse the situations and have so far only had one stand-up shouty row with him as he keeps threatening to take legal action and ban all access for anyone but him on the shared bit of driveway. How he stands legally, I'm not really sure because, as I said, it's shared driveway and part of it is owned by me (I checked the deeds very carefully). Whether we'd win or not in a legal dispute is hardly the point, I just don't want the hassle.

What I also don't want, ideally, is some shouty stroppy wanker living next door to me but there's nowt I can do about it.

The other day, I bore witness to his greatest episode of throwing his toys out of the pram.

We have a customer who pays in a fair amount of cash and brings in a few large parcels every week. Due to the double yellow lines and the fact that he's carrying a few grand too, he parks in my half of the driveway. He can't park all the way in my section as he still needs to open the boot of the car (due to the tight space, you need to reverse in). Sadly his arrival coincided with the wanker next door needing to go out.

In his usual reasonable and pleasant way the first thing that stroppy McNeighbour-twat said was "fuck off off my land."

Diplomatic as ever.

Two things to point out here. The customer wasn't actually parked on the neighbours land at all and he wasn't actually blocking him in either. As the customer is a pleasant and considerate chap, he's parked so that neighbour could get out without any problems.

This wasn't good enough for Neighbour McChildish so he stormed into the sorting office and started swearing and shouting at the posties, despite it being nothing to do with him. One of them came to fetch me so I had to go and calm everything down.

A few more minutes of Neighbour O'Tossbag shouting at Customer McReasonable ensued and was ended finally when Neighbour McCuntyfuckhead got in his car and drove off. At no point did the customer move his car as he didn't need to as it was parked on my part of the driveway and, as ably demonstrated by Neighbour O'Bastardpants, wasn't actually blocking him in.

The neighbours big gripe about people blocking him in is that he needs to get in out and out of the driveway and doesn't want to be delayed. Surely in this case he delayed himself by all the unnecessary shouting.

What a fucking cock.

It's Soapbox Time Again

Between the union, Royal Mail management and the government I think this company is going to be pretty fucked pretty quickly.

The union is to blame as despite bleating that they are happy to help modernise Royal Mail, as soon as any jobs or the cushy working conditions the posties have are threatened, they strike. Every time there's a strike, the negative publicity drives more customers away from us. The net result being that there's less income from sending mail and therefore less money to be spunked onto the posties and so more strikes. As one of my customers said to a postman yesterday (regarding the new batch of strikes that are springing up around the country):

"You're all a bunch of communist bastards that should be shot."

Quite.

Royal Mail management play a huge role in the decline of this business. Partly thanks to the union, they haven't effectively modernised the mail sorting or delivering for years. I had a tour of one of the larger mail centres recently and most of the machines there look like they were from the 70's. Most of the mail is actually sorted by hand. You can't tell me that this is a good use of resources. There are plenty of other reasons why management are shite. They just can't work out how to save money either. They made a postie redundant at a local sorting office recently in order to re-arrange the rounds and make do with one less postie.

Sounds good?

Nope. That particular postie was nine months away from retirement. The redundancy package he got was nearly two years wages. So, had they waited for the postie to retire they wouldn't have had to pay out the redundancy package therefore saving about fifteen months of wages. This sort of shit goes on all of he time too, it's by no means an isolated incident of fuckwittedness.

Finally the government have done a load to flush Royal Mail down the crapper too. For years, the Royal Mail pension fund was profitable. Someone decided that he needed to raid that in order to spunk it all up the wall (hint, he's running the country). So, now Royal Mail is faced with a multi billion pension fund deficit. Meanwhile Mr Brown just shrugs his shoulders and says "meh."

Deregulation of the mail industry is taking it's toll too. In order to open up the mails market to competition (something that the EU told us all to do but most European nations seem to be ignoring, funny that) Royal Mail was ordered to deliver mail from other companies. Companies that are able to cherry-pick the most profitable mail routes and customers and aren't burdened by the universal service obligation that Royal Mail is. To add insult to injury, the price that Royal Mail charges these companies is set by the postal regulator and that price is set slightly lower than the cost of delivery. Nice one!

Then we come to Lord Mandleson. Despite his assurances that the Post Office network will be given more government work to do, we're actually getting less and less. The TV licence went to someone else a few years ago. Car taxes are being so heavily promoted tat you can do them online, you can barely make out the text that says you can do them at most Post Offices. Pensions and benefits used to account for a huge swathe of our income. Not no more. In the drive to get people to have them paid into their bank accounts, loads of people were not given the option of a Post Office Card Account. Even now, some job centres are refusing to issue the paperwork to open these accounts as they believe that they're being phased out next year.

Nope, it's not being phased out, it's just changing. We all knew this nearly a year ago. So why has this message not been passed onto the appropriate agencies?

Well, take your pick, conspiracy or incompetence. Both are just as likely.

The annoying thing is that Royal Mail and Post Office ltd are great assets to this country and run properly have a massive positive effect and can generate huge income. Sadly no one can be bothered or is competent enough to do anything other than manage the decline of this company.

Rant over. Normal service will be resumed soon when I write about how much customers are stupid and that they irritate me.

What Do Double Yellow Lines Mean?

They don't mean that it's ok to park there provided that you leave your hazard warning lights on.

They don't mean that it's ok to park there if you're "just popping in to the post office for a moment."

They don't even mean you can park there if you're picking up a large parcel that you can't other wise carry the 50 whole yards to the free and usually half empty car park.

They especially don't mean that you can park on them, get in every one's way and then pull off without looking and knock some young lad off his bike, don't bother getting out of the car and get your husband (who had walked here) to shout at the old woman who was helping up the lad who you knocked over and don't seem to give a shit about.

Now, bearing in mind that double yellow lines mean "NO PARKING" and everyone who has a driving licence knows this full well, why when someone has just done one of the things listed above and then gets a ticket do they feel the need to moan at me about it?

My favourite line they spout when they've been caught is "why aren't these people" (the PCSO's who issue the tickets) "out catching real criminals instead?"

Well, several reasons.

First of all is the fact that parking tickets are good money spinners for the local council/police authority/whoever collects the fines.

Secondly, PCSO's aren't proper coppers so the most serious crime they can realistically do something about it parking offences.

Finally, correct me if I'm wrong here but parking on double yellow lines is kind of against the law. Therefore that makes you a criminal and given that you don't appear to be imaginary, I reckon that makes you a "real criminal." Precisely the type of person that you're imploring that the pretend rozzers to catch.

I would also like to point out, for the record, that I couldn't give a fuck. You were clearly parked illegally and you got caught. Now would be the time to do the honourable thing and hold your hands up and admit that you done wrong. Moaning to me isn't going to achieve anything apart from getting you even shittier service from me next time you're in. As much as I might nod along and grunt in a non-committal way, I don't agree. You've clearly been a lazy tosser who couldn't be bothered to walk an additional 50 yards and you got caught. Good.

Frankly, I'd like to have the power to issue parking tickets. If someone parked illegally outside and came in to pick up a parcel, it's be nice to take their collection card, go out the back door, run round to the front, write the ticket, come back in with the parcel and then hand it to the customer and tell them that they seem to have gained a parking ticket in the meantime. That'd be fucking excellent.

And a special mention to that bitch who knocked that kid of his bike.

You fucking bitch.

I had great pleasure in getting the images of you off the CCTV camera and passing that on to the filth. They didn't even need to ask. I was showing my community spirit. And you know what? Sometimes virtue really is it's own reward.

I'm Not a Pervert But....

When a pretty lady sends back some underwear to a mail order company, I can't help but want to open it up and have a good look.

Just a look mind. I did say I wasn't a pervert.

Unless she's really fit.

Smartstamp? My Arse.

Smartstamp is fast becoming a real pain in my arse. Or, more specifically, a pain in my wallet.

Smartstamp is a service that enables users to print barcoded labels off at home and use them instead of stamps to send items.

This means that if you use smartstamp, you pay Royal Mail direct as you no longer need to buy stamps/postage labels at my post office.

Yay, less work for me!!!

Well, no.

Most of the people who use smartstamp are ebay users. They also know that if what they send goes missing, they're a bit buggered without a proof of posting. Which means that the customer still has to queue up in the post office and processing these takes nearly as long as selling the postage labels would do but the main difference is that I don't get a bean from it.

Thanks Royal Mail. It's all well and good giving the customer the chance to buy stamps online but it's actually no real time saver for them. I sincerely doubt that this has persuaded a single person to use Royal Mail rather than a courier (which is the justification, as well as customer convinience (Hah!), for actually providing the service).

Bloody tight fisted wankers. Don't they realise that, espicially during this lovely recession, a lot of post offices are on the verge of closure anyway and with the reduction in revenue thanks to this brainwave are going to close. Once another round of post offices close, the one major plus point that we have (ie. there being a shit load of post offices everywhere) is gonna go down the crapper and it won't take long for a domino effect to occur. Less posts offices means that less other companies are going to use us (eg. bill payments, etc.) so less people are gonna come in so more post offices will close.

It really winds me up that the short term advantage offered by this product will be more than balanced out by a long term fucking up of the whole network. Possibly a bit exaggerated but I'm annoyed.

It winds me up more that I'm still doing 90% of the work by taking these parcels in but not getting paid for them.

Apologies for the lack of funny but,

Hnnnnnggghhh. Tossers.

Also, can the Royal Mail manager who wanted to bollock me for a fuck up caused by one of her colleagues, not me, try talking to me and not just bitch about it in front of the posties. It might have been nice to get my side of the argument before ranting about me. Fuckwit.

Snap Judgments

Like most people, I tend to appraise my customers as soon they come through the door and then make assumptions very quickly about them. Thanks to years of experience and a massive intellect, I'm usually correct. These assumption are then used to try to tailor whatever I'm going to try to sell to that customer. There's no point trying to flog a credit card or savings account to some dole scrounging pikey. In fact, there's very little chance of selling anything to some of those customers for two reasons:

1. I don't sell booze and fags.

2. They don't tend to buy stuff, they just take it.

The particular snap judgement I'm going to blog about here is one that I never actually had confirmed as right but I'd be willing to bet a fairly substantial sum that it was totally correct.

A morbidly obese woman waddled in the other day. She was clutching a parcel. I sent it off for her, did the usual transaction spiel and then she waddled over to the sweets counter and grabbed two fuck-off huge bars of chocolate and a large bag of sweets. This was rounded off with an oh so predictable bottle of diet coke.

So far, so normal.

The one thing that stuck out as being a bit unusual was the parcel she was sending. It was a mail order return to a fitness company.

Now, I'm guessing that she wasn't sending it back as she'd worn it out through over use. More likely she was returning it cos the very fact that she owned it didn't make her lose any weight.

Was I right or what?

Unhelpline

I've just had to phone our helpline for guidance on an issue that I have had no experience with. Frankly, it's a bit of a doozy but I won't relate it here as it's probably frightfully dull for non post office staff.

Suffice to say, the "help" offered by this line is less than useful.

I was told to do one thing the first time I rang up which I duly did.

A few days later, I had a phone call from another department asking for a reference number pertaining to this transaction. This came as news to me as I hadn't been given any reference number. I was told to phone the helpline again and get said reference number.

One thing to mention about the helpline here, if our queries aren't on a very strictly defined list of queries, then we've got to leave a message on the answerphone and they'll get back to us, usually the next day. In most cases this is just bloody annoying and a waste of my time. On other occasions, it's a real pain in the arse as it means that any disputes (like, for example, this one) drag on over days or weeks instead of being sorted out in half an hour and a few phone calls. Needless to say, all of this is apparently "for our convenience".

Anyhoo, the helpline monkey rings back and I ask him for a reference number. I explain the situation in great detail for the third time and what he said back to me can be summed up as "Computer says no." It just happened to be my poor luck that the twat I spoke to was the worst kind of lazy, disinterested kind of call centre monkey. When I explained the situation to him again and told him of the consequences should this not be sorted out (incidentally, that wasn't a threat. It would create loads of annoyance for the customer involved and a big headache for me and possibly poor publicity for the post office). "Computer says no." It was clear that this twunt wasn't going to lift a fat finger to do anything other than read what it said on his screen. He wasn't going to ask anyone else, he wasn't going to press any other buttons, in short, he was going to repeatedly read what he read the first time and nothing more.

So, despite having explained the situation very carefully to three difference people, I'm no further towards a resolution. I've left one further message on the answerphone and should it not be sorted this time, I'm washing my hands of it.

Useless fucks.

Just Leave Me the Fuck Alone Please.

As much as living where you work cuts down on the commute somewhat, it's also a major drawback in some regards. The fact that I never feel like I never leave work is one of them. The other is that idiots who aren't organised enough to come in when we're open think that I live next to the Post Office purely for their convenience.

Wrong!!!

We're not here for any one's convenience when we're open thank you very much so you can just fuck right off now if you think I'm gonna lift a finger outside of my contracted hours.

Usually it's just people knocking on the Post Office door, utterly failing to add up the clues that we're no longer open (closed sign displayed, lights switched off, no-one in there and the door being locked being the main ones) yet still they have to try to open the door.

"Hmm, this door appears stiff. Perhaps I should get the attention of someone in the shop to inform them of this fact. Hmm, I can't see anyone in there. Could that be because it is dark in there or have they just popped out en masse? I'll try the door again, maybe it'll have become unlocked in the last five seconds or so. Hmm, still not working. I'll peer intently and hope that some kind soul will come to the door. Nope. Bugger."

I've seen plenty of people doing this on the CCTV footage. The above is an approximate transcript of what's going through their minds when doing so.

Anyhoo, those out of hours twats I can easily ignore and so they don't really bother me (Well, no more than the rest of humanity bugs me) but there are some that make it impossible for me to ignore them so I've actually got to go to the effort of being rude to them before they naff off.

Some people think that it is perfectly acceptable to come to my house to get undelivered parcels. If a postie has tried to deliver a parcel but failed they have to bring it back to the sorting office which is attached to the Post Office. The customer has a little card put through their door informing them that they're welcome to collect the parcel from the Post Office and then gives, quite clearly, the opening hours.

Well, that's not good enough for some people. Their parcels are soooo important that the have to have them as soon as possible even if that means bugging me at home. Some customers have tried various excuses ("I need it to go on holiday with" well, you should have organised yourself a bit better then shouldn't you. "The previous postmaster never used to mind" Oh yes he damn well did, he was less customer focused than I am. "It's really important that I get that parcel today," If it is that important, you should have taken some time off work so you'd have been in to receive it.)

One customer is especially bad at this. Despite being told point black on several occasions that you're not welcome to come to my house to collect your parcel, she still persists in asking. It's probably no coincidence that she's Australian or maybe New Zealandish (not that there's really any difference between them despite what the Antipodean colonials may tell you). No doubt her family was deported for being lazy and feckless two hundred years ago.

She even had the cheek to ask me whether I'd consider staying open longer for people who can't come in during normal working hours. When I replied that it wouldn't really be worth it as after 5 o'clock we have precious few customers already so after five thirty I'd be lucky to have anyone come in, she said that perhaps I should bear it in mind anyway.

Bear it in mind? Bear it up your fucking arse more like.

Cos I'm all modern and stuff now.

http://twitter.com/popurnoinplz

Oh yes indeed. I got me a twitter. Now you can tune in to the random thoughts that I commit to t'internet. Who knows, you may even get a better idea of what makes me tick (I'll save you the effort, it's beer, money and porn).

Enjoy my brain-spews.

Thanks Hamish.

My Scottish subordinate, Hamish McStereotype, has gone and done a bad thing.

We have a regular customer who posts a lot of items but happens to be Chinese.

So far, so good.

Unfortunately, Hamish said to me after serving him last week that he can't help getting the song "Kung-Fu Fighting" going round his head every time he serves him. Predictably enough, now I can't help but have the wretched song going through my brain whenever I see him.

This means that I've got to supress a guilty grin while serving. Thus far I've resisted the temptation to go "hurgh!" or comment that my service is as fast as lightening.

Revenge will be mine though.

I've dig out my Ian Dury best of CD and as soon as I get an oppurtunity I'm going to play "Spasticus Autisticus" at Hamish just before any of the local mongs come in.

Or I'll just sack the bastard.

Smack My Kids Up!

Just a quick one to broadcast the fantastic piece of parenting I just had the misfortune to witness.

A lady (and I use the term very loosely) came in with her roughly eight year old daughter. Clearly some disobedience had already occurred as the child was moaning that mum had a tight hold of her but mum was having none of it. After listening for a bit it was clear that the girl had tried to wander off or something equally serious so it was obvious to me that grabbing hold or her as tightly as the mum was doing was clearly a proportionate response to whatever misdemeanour had been committed.

As the youngster struggled more and more, mum gripped tighter and tighter. Eventually, this wasn't enough punishment for the girl or enough humiliation for the parent and the girl was roughly pushed onto her knees on the floor. Again, this wasn't enough for the mum so without any escalation of naughtiness from the girl (well, apart from a little yelp as she was thrust onto the floor) and so WALLOP!!! In an earth shatteringly unpredictable development, the girl started crying and the mum responded with the favourite cliche of children everywhere:

"I'll give you something to cry about if you don't shut up!"

Superb. Fortunately by this time I'd finished her transaction and she left.

It would be wrong of me, at this point, to mention that the transaction she was carrying out was getting out a large amount of benefit money. It would be even more wrong to hint that there may be a link between poor, lazy, stupid people who get money undeservedly chucked at them by our fantastic benefits agency and shit parenting.

Nope. No link at all.

And she was fucking fat too.

I'm actually gonna miss someone.

Yup, shock horror, end times must be upon us but one of my favourite customers is moving out of the area soon.

Oh yes, despite what you may believe, I do have some customers that I can not just tolerate but actually like.

The main reason for me liking this customer is the large volume of mail he brings in. Granted this is tempered somewhat as it means I've got a lot of extra work to do but a good amount of his packages are special delivery which is a nice little earner for me.

Another reason why I like this customer is that he's actually stayed loyal to the post office and I'm gonna stick my neck out here and say that that's due to the excellent service we provide him. If he's got a couple of sackfuls of mail and he's in a hurry then we'll take 'em in and get 'em done while he's off doing important/more interesting things than standing around in the queue.

Unusually, I actually appreciate his rudeness too. Now, I'll give you a moment for that to sink in. I'll have to qualify that as it's not just your common or garden rude rudeness. It's generally well humoured, friendly and amusing banter. Also, he's quite happy for us to give as good as we get. It's very refreshing to be able to be rude to a customers face instead of just slagging them off as soon as they're out of earshot or writing about them on this blog.

So, I'd just like to say thank-you to this customer (assuming that he reads this blog, hopefully most of my customers don't) and if you're reading this and it's still Wednesday them pop in to see me and there may be a small token of my appreciation waiting for you (and I'm not just referring to a tirade of swearing, although he deserves that too).

Normal service will be resumed in the next post.

Regulars - Daisy again

There's just no hope for some folk. Seriously, they haven't got a clue. Sorry to get all right wing and nostalgic for a (likely untrue) glimpse at the past but in practically any era but our own a vast cross section of the populace wouldn't have survived into child bearing age. And a good thing too for a lot of these imbecilic mouth breathers. When I rule the world (it will happen, running a post office is just step number 417 in my 53,890 step plan for world domination. It's progressing according to plan thanks for asking. And you needn't worry too much, the very fact that you're reading this shows that you're withing the demographic that will be amongst the ruling elite due to your obvious taste, intelligence and sense of humour) such oxygen thieves will be wiped out.

Frankly, I've kinda lost my thread here with the thoughts of my military junta and exactly what's gonna happen when I'm in charge. Suffice to say it will rule. As will I.

Oh yeah, Daisy.

For the past few weeks she's been bothering us more than normal. She applied for a loan from the DWP for £1,000. We know all this because she can't read and we happen to be the local muggins reading centre for illiterate morons. We've been reading all her correspondence for her. Although a loan for a grand was denied, she was granted a loan of £800 and for the repayments to come straight out of her benefits every week.

Sadly, we weren't able to find out on why she "needed" the loan as that might have been interesting. As previously mentioned, she gets practically everything paid for her anyway so what does she need a grand for?

Ever since she heard that she was going to get the £800, she's been coming in every day at opening time to check to see if the money had been paid in. She was expecting it to be in the account the day after she sent off the application. She was a bit hopeful really. Surely years of being at the mercy of the DWP for all of her adult life she'd know how crap they are. (And probably a few other government agencies too due to her being a dodgy, pikey retard.)

Anyway, after only two and a half weeks the money is put in her account. This is surprisingly quick for the DWP. Daisy is delighted and says hat it's like winning the lottery.

Really?

Getting a loan for £800 is the same feeling as winning big on the lottery?

It's good to see her aim high in life.

Anyway, the money was transferred into her savings account where, according to Daisy, it was going to stay.

A week later and the savings account and the card account are completely empty. We were curious to find out where all this money had gone and have managed to piece together a few details translated from what Daisy told us when she was taking the money out and some assumptions.

At least two hundred quid went on one of her kids birthdays. Exactly what she bought is unknown but I'm guessing that most of it was frittered away.

Another hundred quid was taken out so she and family could go to the local carnival. Frankly, I'd find it difficult to spend £20 at this event so £100 must have taken some doing. Needless to say she did it though as she came in the Monday afterwards to get her weekly benefits fix. I'm guessing that a lot of it was spent in the beer tent.

The remainder was probably frittered away on shite and booze. We weren't too sure about the booze until we saw her fella walking past with a bottle of Stella on the go. Pretty pikey behaviour already and then we noticed that it was not even 10:30 in the morning. No wonder they're spunking the money away at a rate of knots. It also explains why Daisy has the occasional black eye. It just goes to show how poor a grasp on money these people have. If you're going to be a pikey alcoholic existing on benefits then at least drink cheaper booze. What's wrong with Special Brew or tramp strength cider? Nope, these cretins clearly have ideas above their stations.

From the behaviour of this family, I've managed to work out why some people are poor.

It's because they are too lazy to work and too stupid to hold on to any money that does come their way.

FACT!!!!

How To Make Old People Panic

It's simple really, just send them a letter about their card accounts that mentions closure of the account. It doesn't matter if, purely hypothetically you understand, the letter says that if they don't use the account for a whole year, they'll be sent a letter and if they don't respond, the account will be closed but the money will still be available if they want it.

If such a letter were to be sent out to the coffin dodgers, I'd put cash money on them reading the letter and concluding that their account is due to be closed TOMORROW even though they use it regularly every week and someone will come round and sodomise all of their pets. Then they'll run up here brandishing the letter and ask me whether their account is going to close like the letter says it will.

Y'know, it's a bloody good job that such a letter hasn't been sent out 'cos I really can't be arsed to deal with loads of worried, stupid, smelly old people who can't be bothered or are far too dim to work out a simple message on a letter.

What's that you say? They have sent exactly a letter like that out to card account holders?

Fucknuts!!!

PS. I'm also well aware of what the weather is like. Firstly, I can see and feel the effects of it, secondly every other fucker in here has said something about the weather too. The next person who says "Hot enough for you?" is going to get punched in the face, OK?

PPS. not 10 minutes after I posted this, Robert came in and the first thing he said was "Hot enough for you?" Irritating, smelly bastard.

Are you deaf, stupid or just not listening?

Some customers don't seem to understand this whole concept of listening to what I'm saying and responding appropriately.

One of the biggest areas that I encounter this is when someone asks for registered delivery.

It's been probably more than ten years since we did a service called registered mail but old habits die hard. Sadly some of our customers refuse to die, hard or otherwise.

Registered mail was replaced with special delivery but most people can't grasp this. A bloke I've just served handed me a parcel and asked for registered delivery. Out comes the usual spiel reserved for this situation:

"Do you mean recorded or special delivery?"

"I want registered post."

"We haven't done a service called registered post for years now. We can do recorded delivery or special delivery."

"I want registered post."



"There isn't a registered post any more. It's either special delivery or recorded delivery."

I described the difference in the services to him (I won't do it here cos it's dull) and told him the prices. He had to go and check with someone in the car. Two minutes later he returns:

"We want registered post please."

In the end, I just did it special delivery for two reasons. One, it's the most secure service so his parcel is very unlikely to go missing so he won't be in to bitch at me and secondly, it's the most expensive service so I earn the most from selling it. See if you can guess which of those reasons I find the most important.

On a related note, A lot of people are too tight to send important/valuable/urgent stuff using special delivery. It really narks me off as it's a missed opportunity for me to make more dough and it increases the likelihood of some twat moaning that his £300 necklace went missing in the post and he wants compensation for it.

That's why we always ask if they're sending valuable stuff and if so point out that standard post is only covered up to £39 if it gets lost/damaged. We'll invariably ask if they can send it recorded delivery but we then have to point out that recorded is only covered up to £39 too. Usually they'll say something along the lines of "Oh, that'll do" and send it off like that.

Similar applies to documents and passports. You wouldn't want them going missing in the post so we always recommend special delivery. Especially for passports as it's fucking obvious when there's a passport in an envelope. If you send an item special delivery then it's tracked everywhere it goes so if a dodgy postie pinches it, it's traceable to that postie. Normal mail and even recorded mail isn't trackable so any postie can nick it and there's no proof. And let's face it, all posties are a bunch of thieving bastards so you have to take precautions.

Frankly, if I weren't so honest, I'd have made a fortune in nicking valuable stuff and selling stolen passports and almost certainly getting away with it.

Stuff costs more now. Get used to it.

I love people who have no concept of inflation.

I've just served a guy who fits that profile and it wound me up.

Before he even spoke he'd riled my slightly because he habitually wears a stupid cravat.

Yeah, who does he think he is? Freddy from Scooby-Doo? But older and without a mystery machine.

As it's a bloody hot day surely he's only wearing it as a style thing rather to keep him warm.

STYLE FAIL!

Anyway, before this descends into a post ranting about fashion sense (but a cravat though, seriously. Plus, I saw an old guy with officially the worlds highest trouserline today. Any higher and he'd have had to undo his flies in order to speak. And that was topped off with a spectacular comb-over.) back to my initial point.

I was initially a bit annoyed just by the cravat when he asked me for a European stamp. I got one for him and asked for 56 pence. He'd obviously missed the price rise back in April and had to get some more cash from his pocket. This wouldn't have been too annoying but then he followed this up by saying:

"Is that how much it costs?"

This particular conversational gambit really gets on my tits. No, that's not the price, I thought I'd try and overcharge you but seeing as you've seen through my cunning ruse I'll tell you what the actual charge is you twunting bastard.

He then proceeded to tell me how such a stamp used to cost tuppence ha'penny and that here never used to be first and second class stamps and everything would be delivered next day yada yada yada.

Oh for fucks sake. Yes, stuff may cost more. This is called inflation. You may have noticed that wages and stuff tends to go up by a similar amount.

If stuff's that expensive now, how can you afford to waste so much money on such a ridiculous cravat?

Tosser.

Car Tax Idiot, A new low

There are some people who are just irredeemably stupid. No matter how much you try to help them, they don't listen or just plain can't be arsed to do what they've been told.

A fella came in my branch on Saturday, trying to re-tax his car. The first snag was that his reminder form was six months out of date. Our computer will only recognise current forms. As much as I hate the "computer says no" defense used by shop staff/call centre monkeys there are some cases when we have no choice and can't override the computer. Sad but true. He asked me if his old tax disc would be any use. I said no.

I then asked him for his log book as we are able to use the information from that to issue a tax disc if there's been a gap in licensing.

He told me that he didn't have a log book, he'd lost it but would his old tax disc be any use?

I said still no.

If that's the case, I told him, that he's need to send a form off to the DVLA and get tax directly from them. He'd also need to send off a form and £25 to get a new log book. I gave him the forms and told him that the address he needs to send them off to is on the back of them. He asked if his old tax disc would be any use.

NO!!!!!

I thought no more of it as it's pretty simple really and for the hard of thinking there is a helpline number on the back.

Two days later his wife comes back with the forms and asks us to process them for her.

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

It's Health and Safety, GONE MAD!!!!

It's no wonder that Royal Mail spunks away money at a stupid rate. Certain things are just great excuses for Royal Mail to waste shit loads of cash for no good reason but while hiding behind Health and safety legislation.

One of our vans had a puncture this morning. Several of our posties volunteered to change it but sadly someone had already told management about it.

This meant that anyone showing initiative and changing the tire themselves would get into trouble as they haven't been trained in changing wheels.

Imagine the trouble that could happen if someone changed a wheel without having had any Royal Mail approved training! Why, the wheel could fall off afterwards or the van could fall over and land on someone who would then explode!

Sadly the van driving Postie had to wait for the RAC to turn up. This meant that mail was late going out (yup, I'm still dealing with the complaints) and I hate to think how much the RAC charge for such a service.

Everyone who drives a van has to go through some bullshit training session anyway so why they can't have a quick training session then I don't know (actually I do, it's cos management are fuckwits and have no common sense or forethought).

The excuse that this is a dangerous or difficult procedure is bollocks too. I've changed a few wheels in my time. The first time I ever did it was while I was in scouts aged about twelve.

I've since found out that not being trusted to change a wheel is actually pretty tame.

Posties aren't even allowed to repair punctures on their own bikes. The bikes have to be taken back to our local metropolis and repaired there.

Idiots.

World's Most Annoying Customer

There's always one regular customer in every Post Office who will be guaranteed to make all of the staff sigh heavily and try to change their serving speed so as to avoid serving them whenever they come in. Actually, there are generally loads of people who fit into that description but there's one who's head and shoulders above the rest.

Her name is Daisy.

Daisy, as the name suggests, is about as intelligent as your average moo cow and also significantly less fragrant to boot.

Her odour can make your eyes water from across the shop on a bad day.

There aren't any good days.

Apparently she is totally unable to wash either herself or her clothes. Or her kids of which she has three all of whom are by different fathers. I say this not necessarily to condemn her but to point out how gobsmacked I am that she managed to find one desperate sucker with no standards or sense of smell to knock her up let alone three.

As is the way with annoying and smelly customers you can be sure that whenever she comes in, you'll be stuck with her for an age as she has a lot of transactions to do.

First of all comes the benefits. She has a card account into which she gets an exorbitant amount of cash. Nearly £300 per week. That's more than my full time staff get paid. On top of that, her rent is paid and she's constantly getting ferried around in a taxi at our expense despite her current fella having a car. What does she think she is? An MP? (A bit of satire for you). I have a feeling that she gets more benefits as she's probably classified as retarded and is therefore "entitled" to extra cash.

Unlike most card account users who either ask for everything in the account or some specified amount, she'll ask for a balance first so she can check how much she's got available. She can't just ask for a balance though. Oh no. That would be too easy. Due to her thick accent and thick head she asks for a balance in her own language. I still haven't, after three years of serving her, managed to work out what she's actually trying to say but I do know what she's asking for.

Once she's got her balance, she'll ask me to read it for her. The following conversation will then go something like this (for ease of reading, I've translated everything she says into English):

Me: "You've got £295.55 in your account."

Her: "If I put £100 in my savings account, how much will that leave me?"

Me: "£195.55."

Her: "I'll do that then. And then I'll withdraw the rest of the balance."

Every bloody week. She's so dim that she can't work out even the easiest of sums.

She'll then pay her various bills and get a top-up for her mobile. Every Monday she'll put a tenner on it. Followed by an additional fiver every day for the rest of the week. I should be grateful that she spends so much as it's a good little earner for me but I'm not sure it's worth it really.

And do you want to know the thing that bugs me the most about her?

The fact that when she checks her balance, she'll often ask "Have I been paid today?" For fucks sake. Being paid implies that you're actually doing something in exchange for the money rather than just being some cash hoover who's of no use to society whatsoever except to make even total bloody fuckwits feel superior to at least someone else. Bloody parasite.

Fuck You Karma

It's now obvious that there is a mysterious Karmic force in this universe and it's also obvious that it reads this blog.

My first customer today (first, Mr Karma is nothing if not punctual) was the very worst card insertion offender it's ever been my misfortune to serve.

After nine (Yes, nine. I counted them) failed attempts to put the card in I managed to finally direct her so that the card was actually in the correct orientation to go in. I told her that it was now correct and she should now insert the card. The card was hovering literally millimeters from the slot and then the stupid old bitch turned it upside-down for no fathomable reason (well, that she's a total fucking twat who wasn't listening to the words that were coming out of my face is a reason I suppose).

Let's try again.

She got the card ready, pointing the right way and then turned it upside-down again at the last second again.

Drastic action required now.

The penultimate resort for this situation was then attempted. This very, very, very rarely fails. I asked her to pass me the card. I turned it round and gave it back to her with strict instructions to hold onto it where I pointed and not to turn it around or over and just put it straight into the slot.

SUCCESS!!!!

She even managed to get the number right first time.

Then she pulled out another card.

Now, you'd hope that having inserted a card correctly (albeit with more help than anyone should ever need) not twenty seconds ago, she shouldn't have any problems putting the second one in correctly. What do you really think the chances of that happening are?

Fuck all as it turns out.

After only six incorrect attempts (my pataience at this point was running out faster than a Frenchman at a battlefield) to get the card in I tired the same trick with getting her to hold on to a specified part of the card seeing as that strategy work last time. Clearly, she didn't think she'd wasted enough of my time and immediately turned the card upside-down and swapped it to her other hand.

Try again.

Same result.

In the end I had to ask my colleague who was shop-side to put the card in for her before I lost my temper at this prolonged display of total fucking idiocy.

Frankly I think it should be a condition of the card account that if you're too stupid to insert the card without too much instruction then you're clearly too stupid to be allowed to have any money. Someone that dim is probably only going to eat the cash or something anyway so why drain the nation's coffers allowing such sub-human intelligence to continue. With pensioners, it's too late to stop 'em breeding and buggering up the next generation but there's a lot of young people who are nearly that dim.

I depsair sometime, I really do.

Old People and Pensions

It's finally time for volume two in this epic.

Once the coffin dodger has got over the massive and time consuming (for idiots anyway) hurdle of opening their card accounts, the next stumbling block is actually using the damn thing.

Surely that shouldn't be too difficult? People have been using ATM cards for years without too many troubles.

That sadly doesn't take into account your average pensioner's lack of skill with anything new no matter how simple.

The hassle I'm going to cover in this post is the seemingly easy task of putting the card into the card reader. "Surely this won't require a whole post to go through unless it's padded with loads of unnecesary fucking swearing?" You may think. Think again.

The nearly dead are pretty shite at being organised for a start. They may queue up for five minutes but is there any forward planning going on in those wrinkly little noggins?

Nope.

You can be sure that despite the ample amount of time they've had to get preapred while queuing, they'll get to the front and then spend ages trying to find the card which will never be where they think it is. Purses, pockets, wallets and bags are all searched until the card finally resurfaces, ineviatably in the place they looked first but didn't quite look hard enough.

Next come another tricky stage of the operation that manages to catch out about 90% of all OAPs. They have to put the card into the card reader. Easy enough except they have to put it in the right way round. It's not tricky. There are only four different ways that the card will actually fit in and there's even a picture on top of the card reader showing you what way round it goes AND a dirty great big arrow on the card showing which way in it needs to go. Are these clues enough to facillitate easy card insertsion?

Not fucking likely.

Bearing in mind that there are only four different ways that the card can fit in, surely even the most brain dead should have a one in four chance and, at the very worst, take four attempts to get the card in.

Not a bloody hope.

Six or seven tries aren't uncommon. I'd love it if this were an exaggeration but sadly it's not. One old guy even tried to put the card in sideways and one just held the card up to the keypad, no doubt anticipating the touchless credit card by about three years. There are plenty who come to get both their and their spouses pensions so that means you've got to sit through this palaver TWICE! They don't learn from the first attempt. Noooo, they've then got to fuck me around for the second card too. And what makes it worse is what nearly all of them say when they finally manage to get the card in correctly:

"We should be used to this by now."

YES, YES YOU FUCKING SHOULD YOU GOLDFISH BRAINED WASTE OF EVERYTHING. A BARELY TRAINED BABOON WOULD HAVE A BETTER SUCCESS RATE THAN YOU AND WOULD SMELL LESS. SMILING AT ME AND ATTEMPTING SOME LEVITY AT YOUR OWN FUCKWITTEDNESS ISN'T HELPING THE SITUATION. "HAHAH, AREN'T I STUPID, HAHAHA, HAVEN'T I JUST STOLEN SOME OF YOUR LIFE AWAY THAT YOU COULD HAVE BEEN DOING SOMETHING LESS FRUSTRATING, MORE WORTHWHILE AND INTERESTING LIKE SORTING OUT MY RUSTY NAIL COLLECTION USING TWEEZERS."

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnghhhhh!!!


It kinda hacks me off.

Next post in this series, putting the numbers in.

Well, spank my arse and call me Charlie

I may have got my predictions wrong in my last post.

Although I do maintain that the budget will do little to relieve the recession. And that had customers would have moaned had car tax gone up.

Perhaps I should stick to just dissing customers like I usually do as they smell and are stupid.

As I gaze into my crystal ball.

As you may (or may not) be aware, there is a budget coming up this Wednesday. As I'm such an astute and clever fellow, I'm going to make a few predictions regarding it and it's effects. Nothing too heavy or in depth, just a bit of light satire and customer cussing.

1. The budget will do very little to actually relieve this recession.

Well, that's a no brainer really. Most of the steps this government has thus far taken have done little to bugger all to improve things. The VAT cut didn't make any appreciable difference, the stamp duty threshold change didn't kick-start the housing market and bailing out the banks didn't exactly get credit flowing in any meaningful way.

2. Car tax will go up except for a very very few low emission cars, none of which are cheap to start with.

Again, this is a no brainer. Car tax steadily creeps up every year except for the years when it jumps up like a jumpy thing (apologies for metaphor failure). A few cars have become a bit cheaper to tax but nearly all of these are pretty new cars and are bloody expensive to buy and therefore have been taxed to buggery already on the purchase price when new.

3. My customers will be pissed off when car tax goes up as soon the budget is finished and the prices on their reminder forms are no longer accurate.

This happens every single year. And yet nearly none of my customers learn from it. Every single year they come in (usually a good few days after their tax has run out already) and then look all surprised that they've got to pay a little bit more than it says on the reminder form. And every single year they says something along the lines of "This happened last year too." And every single year I bite my tongue and don't say "Well, why didn't you learn from that and be a bit more organised this year you stupid twat? Also, it's not my fault. Don't whine at me, I couldn't give a toss. You horrible little bell end, now get out."

4. Customers who own cars with high emissions will also get pissed off that they have to pay more.

Due to our dumbed down media, practically everyone in this country believes that it's only four wheel drives that have to pay large amounts of road tax. For some reason, four wheel drive is a far more attractive thing to say on telly or in newspapers than large engined cars. I can guarantee that nearly every report about the budget that your average shit-muncher will be exposed to will bleat on about 4x4 car tax going up but won't mention anything else (ie, actually be accurate).

Allow me to explain how car tax actually works for the hard of thinking.

For cars registered before 1st March 2001, tax was based (for most cars) on engine size. There were two bands, below 1549cc and above 1549cc.

After that, things were based on how much CO2 the car emits. I can't be arsed to put the bands down here cos they're dull. Suffice to say that whether the car had two wheel drive, four wheel drive or fifteen wheel drive was totally irrelevant. What mattered was how polluting the car was AND NOTHING ELSE.

So the next time some tosser comes in to tax his 4.2l Jag and moans about how much tax he's paying on it despite it not being a 4x4 I'm going to fucking scream. If you can afford to buy such a car then you can afford a wee bit more in tax. Frankly, the amount of tax pails into insignificance when compared to all of the other running costs of your average big-assed car. Petrol costs a few bob these days (and is heavily taxed already). Insurance is pricey (and taxed too) and depreciation means that the car costs a fuck load to run. Does anyone moan about that to me (not that I want them too, I hear enough moaning as it is, but I would like folk to be in possession of all of the facts before whingeing at me)?

So, to sum up. The budget will result in me getting moaned at a bit more than normal by morons.

Forgetful priest

More absent-minded hi-jinks from our regular forgetful, religious, irritating twat.

He's obviously well used to having practically no brain so he has a few ways of coping with it. Today he asked exactly which documents he'd need in order to tax his car. The fact that it quite clearly states on the reminder form this information is by the by.

He wrote all this down in a little notebook.

Anyway, I was momentarily impressed that he's got a way to get round his brain embuggerances. This was very short lived when he wandered off and forgot his notebook.

He still remembered to remonstrate with a customer that her three month old child should be baptised ASAP though.

Old people survey

I read yesterday that a survey done by (I think) Age Concern reckons that most old people think that things are worse now than before and are going to get even worse.

HELLO!!!!!

Well done Age Concern (or help the aged or whoever).

Congratulations on pointing out the totally fucking obvious.

Old people spend 99% of their time doing three things:

1. Smelling

2. Moaning

3. Dying

Obviously they do a little bit more than that (eating humbugs, getting in the way, that sort of thing) but they just can't resist any opportunity for a good whinge about some trivial matter that no-one else gives a shit about. Occasionally, they'll even combine all three activities by moaning about how ill they are, being too lazy/ill to wash and therefore smelling and then snuffing it (and then possibly smelling even more, although in some cases possibly not).

I dunno what it is about the crumblies but there's nothing that makes them happier than when they're whingeing about anything and everything regardless of whether the moan is actually justified. Everything was always better years ago (even things that blatantly weren't) and things these days just aren't good enough. Who cares that medical science is keeping them alive and (relatively) healthy for far longer? Or that (despite perceptions) life is actually pretty bloody easy now and they have far more luxuries than ever in the past.

A perfect demonstration of this was Monday.

It's pension day but not just any pension day. It's the day that pensions go up. It's also the day that the price of stamps goes up too.

Can you guess what was the more important fact to all the coffin dodgers?

Was it that they're now getting more free money for doing nothing except not shuffling off this mortal coil? Money, which almost certainly won't be available to my generation when I retire as there won't be any left because it's all given to the banks, old people and the NHS to pay to keep old people alive. I mean, seriously, have you seen the carrier bag full of pills 'n' potions that the average old person gets through every week? Does that really represent a useful investment? And why has so much been given to banks? To safeguard the savings and private pensions of old people. They really are greedy fucking leeches. And ungrateful leeches at that. But I digress.

Nope.

Was it that a first class stamp has now gone up by the Ma-hoo-sive sum of three pence?

Of course it was.

In fact one old bugger moaned about the stamps and then moaned that his pension had actually gone down (obviously it hadn't, he was far too addled to realise that it had increased).

If it weren't for the fact that a large amount of my income comes from these smelly, whiny twats, I'd have started poisoning the Murray Mints years ago. There's no way that anyone under the age of 70 would fall victim to that plan.

Nice weather quandry

Just a quickie.

I'm torn.

I can't decide whether my favourite thing about nice weather is.

Is it the fact that more people will come in here and buy stuff thus making me more money?

Or

Is it that attractive ladies will over-estimate just how warm it is and dress in very little?

I like money a lot. I also enjoy looking at pretty ladies who aren't wearing quite enough. But which is best?

There's only one way to find out....


FIGHT!!!!!

Actually, it's gotta be the boobies. As my old English teacher used to say, if you're going to be an old man then a dirty old man is the best kind of old man to be.

The Fat kid

I've already done a post about how really fat people bug me but here's another one about one specific fatty.

His nickname is (you may have guessed as there's a big clue at the top of this post) the fat kid. Even though he's probably in his 20's by now. He was already a regular here when I took over and although he's not a kid any longer, I'm buggered if I'm going to change his nickname.

As you've probably also guessed, he's a bit portly. In fact, let's not beat around the bush here, he's morbidly obese (probably, I've never actually weighed him and worked out his BMI but I'd imagine that he's well north or 25 stone). His weight gain has been gradually accelerating since I first met him. Scientific projections put his estimated weight at 40 stone by 2011 and 300 metric tonnes by 2020.

The first annoying thing that strikes me about this guy (except for the 17 stone of blubber he carries around with him) is the smell.

Yup, I know I've covered smelly people (so to speak) many times before on this blog but I'll stop bleating about it when people start observing basic personal hygiene. This particular smell is purely the smell of fat people. There's something unmistakable about the smell of a fatty. Perhaps it's all the pies and junk food and stuff trying to escape as well but whatever it is, real fat buggers smell very differently to thin people that have been sweating due to exercise or heat. Incidentally, "differently" means "a lot worse". As the weather improves, the smell increases. Each year though, the point where we have to break out the air freshener as soon as he's gone gets earlier and earlier. Yay for global warming and increased eating.

Now, the smell wouldn't be that bad if I could do his transactions quickly, ideally on a single lungful so I don't have to inhale.

Naaaaaah.

He usually has budget payment cards for electricity, gas, council tax, telephone and rent. He also saves up spare change and brings in bagfuls to exchange for our savings stamps. So far, so annoying. However he is also a junior champion at pension ping pong despite not having a pension which is quite an achievement (And, yes, I have just learned how to put links and things in these posts so I'm gonna use loads until I get bored or learn how to do something better).

The first couple of cards are paid for using cash. However, he can't put £10 on one card and £15 on another and then give me £25. This wouldn't waste nearly enough time. Each card/bill is accompanied by some cash, often requiring change for each card. Then, after the cash has run out, come the cheques. Several of these payments are paid for by cheques. Similarly to the cash transactions, he can't give me one cheque to cover all of the payments. Each card has it's own cheque too. This means far more of my time is wasted in processing the cheques, writing the appropriate stuff on the back of it and pushing extra buttons. I wouldn't mind if each cheque was from a different account (actually, that's a lie but I'd mind a bit less) but they're all from the same account. Why?!? Surely he can't be so organised with his finances that he has to have each payment have it's own cheque so he can keep track of exactly what's going where (he doesn't, unless he fills in the cheque book stubs later from memory cos they're blank when he comes in). I've even told him that he can put the whole lot on one cheque if he wants. My own theory is that writing is the only exercise that won't give him a heart attack and so he does as much of that as he can.

The final thing that bugs me about him is his face.

It just does OK.

Old people and pensions

This will be the first post in a loooooong series of the stupid and annoying things that old people do when trying to take money from their card accounts.

A bit of background first. About five or six years ago (I can't remember exactly due to being drunk and can't be bothered to find out due to being drunk and lazy) the old system of pension books was replaced. The main reason for this was to cut down on fraud. Some of this was done by the customers using fake or altered books to get more cash but the majority was done by postmasters. Sadly this was while I was still a counter clerk and I so missed out on this little earner. The reason so much fraud was perpetrated by postmasters was every week, all of the pension dockets we had cashed got sent off for processing. Apparently, less than one percent of these returns were actually checked. To get round all this the card account was created. It's a very basic bank account that can have benefits and pensions paid in and that will allow you to withdraw the money from a post office using a chip and pin card.

Anyhoo, back to the subject.

As you can probably imagine, this led to all manner of complaining from the coffin dodgers. They're well known for embracing change, remembering things and adapting to new technology doncha know.

Predictably enough this led to about two years of certain customers moaning about the change every single time they came in and how "they're only changing it for the sake of it!" Counter arguments as to why it was changed and how it's actually a change for the better (for all but brain-dead whingebags) fell on deaf ears. Literally in some cases.

The first major hurdle we faced was filling in the application forms. They were only simple but there were a few stumbling blocks that caught out a lot of applicants. The forms had to be filled in in black ink only. There were little boxes on the form that you had to write in, one letter per box. As the forms were machine read it was vitally important that these two criteria were fulfilled otherwise the machine spat the form out and they needed to be filled in again. The final major stumbling block was the ID that needed to be produced to support the application. The customer would never bring in the right sort ("What? You mean this 20 year old photograph with my name on it isn't enough?").

It's not as if it's that difficult to remember either. It said it in nice bold print on the form. It got so bad that we started telling people in very small words and very sloooooowly that they needed to use a black pen and not to go outside the lines. Also, here is a list of ID we need to see. Failure to adhere to these very simple rules will result in us giving you back the form and telling you to fill in a new one. Unless we disliked the customer more than normal in which case we'd send it off anyway as that would mean a three week wait before the form was returned to them.

One of the things that needed to be sent off with the application was the personal invitation document (PID) that the benefits agency would send to the customer to prove that they were eligible for this account. The PID was valid for six months after the date of printing. Some customers managed to fuck up so many forms and take so long applying for these accounts that their PIDs would be out of date. Six months. Twats.

Shut up or piss off. In fact, just piss off.

It may come as a surprise to some of our customers but I really couldn't give a wet rubbery fuck about their personal lives. Obviously, I'm not clear enough in explaining this to them and they persist in telling me in far too much detail every little thought that's rattling around their heads.

This is a business, not a coffee morning/get together for a nice little chat with the only person who'll listen to you (ie. me) because I've got to pretend to be friendly otherwise customers won't come back and you're too smelly/mad/boring/old/dead/stupid/a cunt (delete as appropriate) to have any friends.

I don't mind chatting a bit to at least appear like I give a shit while I'm processing a transaction but as soon as I'm done then you can get to fuck. Under no circumstances at all are you to carry on talking to me once I'm finished. My interest in you has now gone as I'm unlikely to extract any more cash from your wallet.

There are five particuarly bad customers for this heinous crime. Some of them I've already mentioned (the forgetful priest and Robert) but there's more.

By far the worst offender is Peg-Leg Pete.

He just won't take the hint that we don't care.

Yawning, looking at my watch, texting people, feigning a stroke. Doesn't work.

The only reason he's not been told to take his dull stories, shove 'em up his arse and fuck off is because he's rich. He's great for flogging our financial products to and these are the big earners for me.

I don't want to hear about him whinge about his bad leg.

I don't want to hear him moan about how expensive care for his wife is when I know how loaded he is.

I don't want to know about the crushing lonliness of living alone while his wife is in a care home.

I really don't want to hear about how many times his wife used to piss her pants and how he'd clean it up.

Really, all I want to hear from him is:

"Hello, I'd like such and such a thing today"

"Thank-you. I'd like to purchase/invest in one of your big earning products please now you mention it"

"Thank-you. Goodbye"

It's not that hard is it?

Going on and on and on about shite that I really don't wanna hear brings me down, annoys my customers and reduces the amount of business I can do cos you're holding me up. Plus I get labelled the villan when I get bored of it all and tell you to fuck off. Where's the justice eh?

Would you take business advice from Royal Mail?

Recently I received a poster from Royal Mail and was asked to put it up in a prominent position in my Post Office.

I thought I'd better have a quick look at it just so I could answer any questions form the three people that probably would have read it (Hey, I like to be prepared for any realistic eventuality, needless to say I have no contingency plan for customers suddenly becoming polite and clever or Royal Mail/Post Office doing something effective).

The poster was inviting our business customers to have look at the Royal Mail website and get a tailored growth plan for their business. It promised a useful document personalised to their particular business that would have highlight similar (but successful) businesses and their strategies and also include ways that Royal Mail could help their businesses grow.

Intriguing no?

Seeing as I'm running a business and an always on the lookout for ways to make more money I thought I'd give it a try before putting the poster up.

Fifteen fairly shallow questions later and alarm bells have rung after one of the questions asked how I paid for my postage (franking machine, smartstamp, at the post office etc). As fiddling the system and printing out bogus receipts to keep the accountant happy weren't options, I had to put "pay at the Post Office" as my answer.

A short time later and an email with an attached PDF file arrives. Pound signs light up in my eyes at this point as the PDF is no doubt filled to the brim with ideas and case studies that would help me make a fucking fortune. No, seriously.

I'm sorry to disappoint you but this sort of thing was conspicuous by it's absence.

It was full of shite.

A few gems were things like get Royal Mail to do a leaflet drop for you or get them to give you a mailing list. The case studies were pretty much all companies that used Royal Mail and them saying how great they were.

Excellent!

However, the greatest piece of advice was how I could save money on my postage.

Simple.

Don't pay at the Post Office.

Get smart stamps or a franking machine.

Either way, I end up having to take the mail in, write out any proof of posting if required, sort it, bag it up and get it ready for collection.

I just don't get paid for my work.

In some ways you've got to admire the balls of Royal Mail for this. It's great (albeit short term) business sense to cut out the middleman and therefore make loads more dough.

Frankly though they can just go and perform a flying fuck through a rolling donut if they think I'm gonna put up a poster that tells my customers not to spend money at my fine establishment.

Fuckers.

If this were an isolated incident I might be willing to forgive it as a minor irritation. Guess what though. It ain't. It's all well and good saving costs/making more profit for Royal Mail but what's gonna happen when so many customers migrate to these new payment methods and Post Offices are no longer financially viable?

Again, Fuckers.

More and more often postmaster are being exploited as the public face of the Post Office to answer questions and hand out leaflets but more and more often the effort we put in is unrewarded as customers are being encouraged to use the web or other ways to pay for their services. Result? We get screwed out of our payment.

Again, but in bold and caps:

FUCKERS!!!

Needless to say, the poster was relocated to the bin asap. As was the glossy fold out waste of time and cash that I recieved in the post a few days later. Yup, Royal Mail had gone to the expense of printing the PDF file out but and mailing it to me.


PS. In case you're worried that I've gone soft on my customers lately, don't. They'll get their turn soon enough but I've got a good many years worth of pent up angst and bile that's being spunked onto Royal Mail/Post Office's tits (apologies for the mixed metaphor but I'm drunk).

Boneheaded decisions by Post Office ltd.

In their endless quest to cut costs, Post Office ltd have managed to shoot themselves and a lot of subpostmasters in the feet over the last year or so. Obviously, cutting costs is a great way to turn round ailing businesses. Sadly the amount of business we can do is being impacted by this cost cutting.

A case in point is the foreign exchange.

A lot of branches now have Euros and Dollars on demand. Most of the time, the bureau people check their computers for our levels of currency and then work out our weekly sales and then top us up if we need it. Although the amount they send us for a top up is fixed depending on the season. So if we're selling £10,000 of Euros a week but the seasonal top up level is £7,000 worth then that's all they'll send us. We can ask for extra but it's a pain in the arse.

Anyhoo, back to my point.

The level of Bureau sales dropped a shit load before Christmas. The first stupid thing they did was cancel any top ups if you were holding more than 1.8 weeks of your past few weeks average sales (if you averaged £1,000 per week then you needed to hold £1,800 of currency just in case you had a big order). Next thing they did was drop that down to 1.5 weeks worth. Finally, they cancelled ALL standard orders regardless of how much we had on stock.

This meant that branches like mine that didn't have much of a downturn in sales had to make lots of extra phone calls in order to get some currency sent out. Not only was this a waste of time but you then had to deal with call centre monkeys who seemed to be revelling in their new found power. Any and all exercise of common sense on their part was banned.

An average phone call to one of these plebs went along the lines of:

"I need some more currency for my delivery tomorrow."

"How much do you want?"

"£5,000 worth of Euros please"

"Hmmm, we're showing that you averaged only £3,000 worth last week. We can't send that amount out"

"A customer has specifically asked for £2,500 worth of dollars for next week. Plus, we would have sold more but we ran out because we weren't sent enough in the first place."

"Hmm, I'll send you £3,000 worth and if you need extra you can get an emergency order done."

"Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnghhh! Goodbye"

Thanks to the fuckwits who made this decision and the bigger fuckwits who enforce it to the exclusion of all common sense, we've missed out on a fair amount of business. This has meant that our weekly average sales have gone down meaning that we're being sent less and less each time.

Hasn't anyone ever thought this decision through at all? On the beancounters spreadsheets the amount of money wasted by having too much cash in the system will be lowered. But, what won't show up is the amount of business lost because we didn't have any currency to sell. Hopefully, it will show up the number of emergency orders the network had to make. Orders which we keep getting memos about telling us not to place them unless we absolutely have to as they're expensive. Well, we have to cos our normal orders are short you twats.