Wrecking ball ends sorting office hopes

The old delivery office on Cromwell Road: what it looks like now. Photograph courtesy of Jon Eldude

The old delivery office on Cromwell Road: what it used to look like

So the old delivery office on Cromwell Road has been demolished at last. One of my colleagues told me. He said that that they were starting work as he began a loop, and that they were finished by the time he got back.

“It took about 35 minutes,” he said. “They don’t hang around that lot.”

It’s the end of an era. Three years and three months since we moved: three years and seven months since our strike.

Another of my co-workers told me that as long as the office was there he still held out a secret hope that we could return one day.

He said that he had been talking to one of the managers who had admitted that costs had increased substantially since we moved.

It’s exactly what we said would happen. You can’t add forty minutes’ journey time to our day and then expect the same amount of work. The irony is that now we are privatised, that is precisely what is expected.

There’s an ever increasing pressure to get more work out of us for the same pay.

Many things have changed in the intervening years. I used to be proud of the fact that we were a sustainable industry, using bikes, and working from a local office. Nowadays we work in pairs from the back of a diesel van, and drive upwards of 20 miles a day.

We are supposed to use these trolleys but they slow us down, which means that most people sling their bags over their shoulders. I predict an epidemic of back problems in the coming years.

The old Whitstable office was small and intimate and generally upbeat. You could hear everyone’s conversations. There was a constant banter, which was highly entertaining at times.

The Canterbury office, on the other hand, is cavernous, and we share the building with the sorting machines, which rattle and groan like a tribe of demented lawnmowers, making it impossible to hear your own thoughts at times.

A number of respected colleagues have since left.

I suppose the one positive note is that the new building will house a Crown Post Office.

So that’s one campaign we haven’t lost.

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The Whitstable Gazette.
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