The power of the unions compels you!
I worked in Coventry for a while, and found a lot of my customers to be far more unpleasant than the ones I’d dealt with in London. Some of them were lovely, but there were many many jobsworths – people who wouldn’t sign for a delivery because they were about to go on a break so made you wait half an hour, that sort of thing.

One week, our driver was on holiday so I had to go out and do a few deliveries – not a problem, generally it was pretty cool to be out and about, and nice to meet some of the people I’d spoken to on the phone.

One of our customers was Dunlop – the tyre people – only here they made wheels. I’d actually been there on a visit so the guys there knew me.

One morning we had a delivery for them so I got to the warehouse and rang the bell of the door marked “Stores”. There was no answer, so I rang the bell again – and while I waited, peered through the door to the left of the Stores, to see the guys I dealt with sitting playing cards, obviously on a break. One of them looked up, caught my eye… and went back to the game. Annoyed, I decided to wait until their break was over, so put the delivery down and waited. After about 10 or 15 minutes a bell rang somewhere and everyone returned to work. The guy who’d caught my eye spoke to me as he went past, the others all ignored me. What did he say?

“Stores isn’t in there any more, you need to go round the corner and it’s at the end of the corridor on the left”

Why the fuck couldn’t he have told me that before? It would have taken him 10 seconds and saved me a quarter of an hour of waiting around like a lemon…

/rant
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 9 Sep 2008, 22:50, 1 reply)

My brother

Worked for years doing deliveries on bike and van round London. He said building sites were the worst, as there were so many people working there who were also signing on, that sometimes no fucker would sign for a delivery - not even a false name. Most of the time, he'd sign it himself with a 'John Smith', drop the parcel and scoot.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Wed 10 Sep 2008, 14:22, closed)