On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:16:37 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message 485c30df@qaanaaq, at 23:36:15 on Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Andy
Hall remarked:

The sorting office is at the Post Office.
That's fairly unusual, but I do know of a few like that.

They may be seaparate organisations but have the same bad public
sector culture of the past.
Don't they have a separate queue for the sorting-office stuff?

Yes. Outside and wih no shelter or nearby parking.

How long is the queue normally? Parking's not too bad at my local
sorting office, and the man has an office indoors. I've never waited
more than a minute inside.

RM have a separate 'customer service' office here (well, in the city
centre). There's fairly expensive parking about 200 yds away, or you
can take the risk of 'parking' in a loading bay almost outside¹. The
office is almost exclusively for collection of items where the postman
has crept up to your door and left a card (insisting on waiting 48 hrs
before you can collect (why?)). In practice I've normally collected
the same day :-).
There's usually a few minutes' delay in there, but you can keep an eye
on the car whilst waiting (indoors!), and if you choose a quiet period
you can often get served straight away.
The sorting offices (there are separate I/C and O/G ones) are miles
away with no public interface.


¹Parking really isn't so bad now that the LA have taken back parking
control from NCP, who were really vicious - there was national
publicity a couple of years ago about their tactics...

--
Frank Erskine