Hey Vic,
You mention a few things that have become quite apparent as of late. And they are;
1)Poor response from the "company"...
2)Pissed off customers...
3)Global players...
4)Squeezing on the customers...and I now add,
5)squeezing and pissing off the routemen.
I see a continueing (is that how you spell continueing?...ueing?) trend that will make my retirement all the more sweeter and timely. Even though we try to maintain our ethical standard's and encourage each other on, we're being pushed to the gills by the Co.. Morality amongst the routemen is tipped into the ever-so-slight nose dive configuration and we hold on doing the best we can to represent the customer and the company. We really do want to do it right. Sadly, the bean counters neglect the simple fact that revenue ain't the whole of the business. If it weren't for the customer, where would the company (and us) be? Seems greater revenue at the cost of trying to build loyalty through customer care is the goal of the Co. Gotta run my route in a blast suit, with a GPS device tracking my every minute, no time for customer questions/relations due to the shear work load...and by golly, do it safe...like according to the book man! And "Hey...routeman...why are you consistantly missing 10,12,18 services per month? If you can't do 170 plus hours a month, we'll find another who can! And oh, by the way...your calls are up again...whats wrong?" So to help us in our quandry, the Co. disolves the "unprofitable" route, and scatters the hours over the surrounding men. Yeah, that helps, now I've got 240 hours...and they've got the answer for that too. There are too many contradictions in the order of the day yet we have to perservere, try to adapt and do it gladly. It isn't like it used to be and it will never be like that again. Where will it end? See howya got me started Vic?! It wasn't supposed to happen this way...honest!
