DOES ANYBODY GIVE A TRUCK ABOUT PARCELS? I DO!
RUTH: How are your deliveries going recently? Mine aren’t too good. Another day, another bashed-up, damaged parcel arrives at my front door. The drivers don’t hang around because, as we know, they’re in very short supply and there’s work to be done – a lot of it. I’m a great believer in personal responsibility, but we’ve got to ask, what’s making these people behave in this way? They don’t seem to have a connection to what they are doing. A care, a love, a responsibility – and you know what? I don’t blame them.
Whether our parcels are not being handled with sufficient care when they’re being despatched from their source, abused at a holding depot, roughed up in transit or just banged down on doorsteps, somebody is responsible for making this happen. The waste of time, money and resources involved in returning and replacing damaged goods is immense – but the number-crunchers who run courier companies obviously think their rules, targets, and total lack of respect for their customers and drivers still makes them enough money to make it worthwhile.
This is another area where employees aren’t respected and bosses don’t care.
You mightn’t care either, as long as your parcel arrives – but think of doing that job… on your own, driving and delivering with no help, on a schedule that defies belief, that’s never going to get lighter and being tracked, watched, every inch of the journey. They don’t want people doing that job, they want robots. It’s complete dehumanisation, and I have the pictures to show the consequences. It’s drivers like these who will make our Christmas happen. We rely on good people, good drivers, of a good standard, for everything. To their greedy bosses – start treating them better, or we’ll all pay.
‘Courier companies lack respect for drivers’ Ruth