Going to start a new sub-series: Why your mail/parcel was not delivered today:
And, no, for those wondering, nobody got carded in that apt. Building. I couldn’t even access the mailboxes. The parcels were ‘failed’ and to be delivered tomorrow.
Also, if there was a fire in that building, you’re fucked!
That’s pretty funny
good think they left it hidden behind those walls…
Although fucking hell, imagine just completely blocking off that doorway
Postmen are the new milkmen. So make sure your uniform is clean and you shave daily. 
I know you’re new, but was wondering how often posties change their routes. We used to have the same guy for literal ages, probably late 50s/early 60s then he seemed to get switched out for a succession of much younger posties for a while.
Then the one day I needed help pushing my car (long boring story not worth sharing) him and my neighbour appear out of nowhere to give me a hand. Legend.
It sounds like you have made some really good decisions, so props to you. Being happy with your job is important, most of us spend 5 days a week working, that’s a massive chunk of our time, and it’s not worth being miserable. The 15-20km walking every day is going to do you wonders, the benefits of walking are being appreciated by experts even more these days.
While the money may not be quite as good, that’s completely over-shadowed by improved mental health and a healthier lifestyle. People get too obsessed with money and status, don’t worry about that stuff, just follow what makes you happy.
Most full time posties don’t change their routes that often. Maybe if they get bored of their route they’ll transfer to a different team (or a different distribution center - usually if they move closer to that area) Eventually, I’ll learn all the routes in Leichhardt as I’m on the Leichhardt team.
The Leichhardt team are all full time (with some occasional part-timers/reliefs covering shifts). Once I am comfortable with my routine, I’ll start learning to do ‘cuts’ of other Leichhardt runs, where if a teammate is sick or on leave I can do a part of his route without deviating too far from my route. All the routes are basically giant jigsaw puzzles of that suburb and one postie will often share a depot box (those green, often graffiti covered square boxes you see on the side of roads randomly) with another postie at some point on their route (for example my shared DB is on the corner of Foster & Marion St in Leichhardt).
I cover all of Foster & Tebbutt Sts, but have a little chunk of Marion that runs past Lambert Park, whereas he does all of Marion from Foster St up to Flood. So if he’s sick, I could take that stretch of Marion Street and cross at Marketplace and then down the otherside of Marion back to Foster and then continue on my run. The postie that does Norton St might ‘cut’ down Marion to Flood and cover that stretch and so on and so forth. Doing a cut guarentees you at least an extra hour of OT, and your pay rate increases too. Pretty much all posties will do a cut a couple times a week.
Not all areas are full time, though. For example the whole Balmain, Birchgrove, Rozelle and Lilyfield routes are all part time posties. They don’t start at 5-6am, they don’t go to Alexandria DC to sort their route mail, they literally rock up at the respective Post office and start their route from the first depot box. The bloke who trained me, he’s a full time “relief” postie, but he does runs all over the Inner West, City and Eastern Suburbs. He prefers it because he doesn’t generally know what he’s doing until he’s rocked up in a morning. Yesterday he was saying he did Leichhardt on Monday, Balmain/Birchgrove Tuesday & Wednesday, and then Thursday he was in Coogee and Friday in Mascot.
Perhaps your postie went on leave, or decided to become a FT relief for a bit of variety.
The village I lived in before now was so small we didn’t have mail delivery. You had to collect your mail from the post office.
The postie knew everyone in town and would grab your mail as you walked in, have a good chat with whoever was there.
It was proper old school small town vibes.
Just got told my application was unsuccessful to formally cover for my manager short term.
Im the most senior member of the team and have been with them since inception but apparently the internal recruitment team said my cover letter ‘didnt address enough of the position criteria’. The position criteria was absolute jargon so i gave multiple practical examples of how I work and have knowledge with every single facet of the team.
Either they dont want me, which seems odd as ive had multiple people internal and external to the team tell me that they assumed I would be a shoe-in OR ive been overlooked because of a cover letter that is potentially screened by some sort of AI recruitment platform.
Trying to be professional about it but really just want to set fire to my laptop and call in sick.
Sounds like the very likely answer. I’m willing to bet nobody actually read it.
So not even an interview? That seems bonkers.
No interview and i cant imagine there would have been too many applications as its an incredibly niche part of the business and its just for 8 weeks.
You sure they’re not going with option D - don’t fill the position coz its only 8 weeks? Its pretty much annual leave areas…
Someone is going to be announced today/tomorrow… it was advertised internally so not sure why theyed bother doing that if they werent going to fill.
They aren’t going to fill the position and just expect you to pick up the slack for the experience and vibes.
Well, they’re either bringing someone from outside the team to run the place for 8 weeks - which seems wild or there’s someone else on your team they have plans for in the future…
that’s just really really weird It’s an internal position hire, I’m assuming the person hiring is aware of the teams and the people that are being considered prior? Stating your cover letter wasn’t good enough is just fucking weird.
The way that I see it, and it doesn’t sound too good on paper, but an internal hire/promotion is generally chosen before the interview process. If I’m advertising, it’s not identify others that I may not have realised have a drive for promotion, or to give people some hope that there’s internal promotions available to anyone if they interview. In either case, I already know who the person is, that’s going to be promoted and the interview is just the final step to make sure the person is right for the position.
Happens all the time at my company, because of HR rules or whatever they have to advertise but already have someone else in mind. The harsh truth is they often go with the younger person with a ‘bright future’, which I have been lucky enough to be a few times in the past for promotions but am starting to get to that age where I’ll be the one getting overlooked.
This is only an 8 week interim thing too, also possible that they promised it to someone else to just keep them at the company/as part of their development plan etc.
I also can’t really believe they are running a whole app process for an 8 week interim role.
Yeah, it’s not sounding great. For an internal position of that tenure, I’ll advertise if I want to test how my 2IC compares to others of that level. It also provides an opportunity for the organisation to provide a development path to someone that has been rated highly.
It’s not great if the feedback is not coming from your leaders - if you were unsuccessful, common decency is for them to give you a call and explain why, and a cover letter is a ridiculous excuse. They should know your work, and even if HR said the cover letter wasn’t great, your work should at least get you to interview - I can definitely understand why you’d feel crap about this.
I’ve been overlooked for acting in a similar situation before, but I could understand the main exposure that my boss saw as a risk, and I could see that the other person from another team could cover that better… but nevertheless, my boss had the conversation up front with me beforehand, so we were all on the same page
Very much this… At the very least there should be a guaranteed interview. A cover letter for an internal position, at least for me, is daft. A cover letter should be used to get to know a candidate if it’s an external position. To blame a cover letter for an internal position where you know the work being generated, as well as the experience isn’t right.
