Previously, in Great Britain, the postman knocked on the door at least twice from Monday to Friday (morning and afternoon), once on Saturday and, separately, as necessary to deliver telegrams or registered letters. Twenty years ago, the thing was reduced to a daily delivery. During the pandemic, and in view of sick leave, one every three or four days. And now, facing the holidays, good luck if the Christmas cards arrive. The famous Royal Mail is no longer what it used to be. Now here near.
Established in 1516 as a department under the control of the Government, it was progressively privatized between 2013 and 2015 and has become a real disaster, with morale at rock bottom among its 163,000 employees (it is the main provider of postal services in the Kingdom United), who feel underpaid and with more work than they can handle. A postman walks on average eighteen kilometers a day, takes more than twenty thousand steps (for those who watch those things), ends his day at three in the afternoon and earns between 30,000 and 35,000 euros gross per year.
In a country where 16 million people (a quarter of the population) suffer from some type of long-term disability, ten million are on permanent sick leave and five million live exclusively on State subsidies, the Royal Mail is an example of how the United Kingdom has once again become the sick man of Europe. Absenteeism is rampant, barely five minutes pass between an interested party filling out their online application and receiving the job offer, but many of the new employees only last a day or two on the job, which takes them a while to realize that they have of spending the day walking instead of delivering comfortably with a truck.
The need to compete with Amazon, DHL, UPS, Federal Express and other delivery companies has exacerbated the crisis. Theoretically, the Royal Mail has the obligation to deliver letters from Monday to Saturday on all the streets of the United Kingdom, but in practice this is not fulfilled, not even remotely. Two undercover journalists from the Sunday Times have discovered that there is actually an implicit mandate to prioritize parcels, at the expense of other mail, which can languish for days in distribution centres. An elderly man, surprised at not receiving any congratulations on turning 94, went in person to the nearest post office, and they gave him fifty cards that had been accumulating for weeks. This is what happens if a street manager gets sick.
Digital Christmases have largely replaced paper ones (the Gutenberg galaxy is dying), and between that and the delays of the Royal Mail, lucky will the British be that this Christmas they receive a card before eating the nougats or Santa Claus shows up with the sleigh. Worse yet, millions of citizens routinely miss important official notices, bank statements, and Social Security appointments for an operation or a doctor's visit because they arrive late. Hundreds of thousands of cases are pending in the courts of citizens who have appealed fines because they never received them. Today packages rule, because they make more money (not only are there more of them, but they are increasingly larger, occupying up to 90% of the available space in warehouses and distribution centers and overflowing delivery carts).
Before, not only did the postman call twice, but he was also a professional who knew everything, the names of the neighbors, even in which houses on his route there were dogs with bad tempers, or floors slippery with the rain, or elderly people. with mobility difficulties who were doing a favor if their mail was carried to whatever floor it was. Today most of the veterans have retired, replaced by temporary workers with much lower salaries who, in view of this, do not want to go out of business. Consequence: when the afternoon arrives, the packages have been dispatched, but the letters and cards accumulate dust. And customers are switching to the competition (in 2004 the Royal Mail delivered twenty billion letters, last year, only eight billion).
There are many things that the State does not do better than private companies. But he was pretty good at dealing cards. Today the doorbell doesn't ring by chance and the postman is on leave or delivering packages.
