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Original poster

Rude post office staff, shall I complain?

89 replies

neverendingannoyingcold · 09/12/2011 14:31

So I take my 15 or so Christmas cards to the local post office...

I?m the only customer, I go up to the desk and greet the lady with a cheerful ?hello?. She stares at me blankly.

I have a pile with UK cards, other half are to another EU country. I hand her first pile, tell her exactly what I want - "second class, these cards have letters in, these don't [re weight]" bla di bla... She starts huffing and puffing, making a big commotion of seeing if cards fit slot etc. Just generally looking/acting pissed off.

Then I hand her part of the pile (with same sized envelopes, as I have three different sizes) to EU country, more tutting and displays of annoyance. She starts sticking stamps on in random places! Shock

I get nervous when I notice I have missed an English card (we are now on EU cards), I bring myself to ask her, could I please have another 2nd class stamp. She rolls eyes.

At this point my son grabs one of the toys, she IMMEDIATELY announces ?Put that back if you're not purchasing it!?.

By this time, I am sweating and really dreading to ask the next question, if I could please have a strip of selloptape as two of the remaining envelopes seemed to have come undone. She bangs the sellotape down on the counter in front of me.

I notice that there is another card that should go to the UK and not to the EU country but am too intimidated to point this out... Blush

When paying, I put the card in the wrong way (no instructions on this machine though I usually put it in the wrong way anyway Blush) she barks "wrong way!"

When I get home and rant at tell DH about it, he says this behaviour is outrageous (I never notice at the time, only when I step out of the situations...), I should complain to her manager.

Went back to post office today to enquire. She?s not there but colleague tells me the grumpy bitch lady in question IS the manger. Hmm

I would love to write a crafty letter but what?s the point if SHE?s the manager...

So: Should I complain? And who to?

OP posts:
libelulle · 09/12/2011 20:13

I was once accused of forging my signature on my PO account by the miserable old bat at the counter. She looked at me accusingly and bellowed 'this isn't yours, is it'. I squeaked in indignation and she backed down.. I was seven years old, withdrawing five pounds of my birthday money, with my mum standing behind me. Takes a special kind of person, eh?

cakeismysaviour · 09/12/2011 20:17

We had a really rude cow woman working in our local post office, and we often used to go into town and use the big post office to avoid her. :(

It turned out she was defrauding the place! I forget the details, but it ran into many thousands of pounds. IIRC she got sent down.

Its actually very pleasant in there now......

WhistletoeAndMine · 09/12/2011 20:18

Wow. ALL the people in our post office are fantastic. We use a large one in town and they are friendly, chatty, smily and helpful....all the time. Yes sometimes the queue moves slowly but we live in a town with a high percentage of elderly people who sometimes need assistance.

We could send our parcels more cheaply by purchasing the postage online but feel it's important to support local post offices. In fact, our overseas postage generally means they hit their daily targets.

If you send a lot of packages by recorded delivery, you could ask for a bulk mail confirmation form so they don't have to type in all the addresses, which is quicker for you and them.

MabelLucyAttwell · 09/12/2011 20:25

I always collect a stamp cost leaflet from the Post Office in april (that's when prices 'change'). I get in sufficient stamps for any small things that I want to post during the year to save having to drive to the nearest Post Office several times. Yes, Christmas time is when we send cards abroad and the pricing leaflet tells us what the cost will be for different cuntires including weights.

Weights? I use my kitchen scales which go up to 10Kg but if I had anything to post that was as heavy as that, I would take it to the PO.

And I have never yet met anyone serving in a Post Office who was unpleasant.

BeaHededd · 09/12/2011 20:29

I work in a Post Office and am very nice I promise Grin
A few of my colleagues however can make me cringe with their rudeness and apparent reluctance to actually help customers.
Having a letter in a card going to the UK should make no difference unless it is a six page essay providing it is just a standard size card.
I have even been known to print out at home guidelines for parcel sending overseas with size and weight guides to hand out to our customers before Christmas to save any trouble when they bring them in.
I am sorry that you have experienced this and was wondering if they are a Post Office outright or in a W H Smith branch as I am and when we moved we took a 50% pay cut and this still rankles with some no excuse though.
You can lodge a complaint by ringing 08457740740 and tell them what happened this then generates a report to the area manager.

crazycarol · 09/12/2011 21:27

My dh works in a PO. He is always very polite to the customers, but comes home and moans about them to me Xmas Angry
His manager on the other hand is useless, she has had 2 check and send passport applications returned because they are incorrectly completed and earlier this year they ran out of stamps because she didn't order enough Xmas Hmm

springydaffs · 09/12/2011 23:24

Definitely worth ringing that 0845 number to get a free book of stamps.

joanofarchitrave · 09/12/2011 23:38

it's healing to read all this as dh has been set back in his depression several days by the sheer intransigence of a collection office PO staff member today. I think to be fair that the pay and conditions of PO staff are awful and our central city PO is fantastic, but i just hate the tension of going to the collection office or the local PO, I always feel like I'm annoying them.

LOL at 'this is not an ebay office'. What idiots.

BeaHededd · 10/12/2011 01:38

joan I am so so sorry that you Dh has suffered at the hands of my colleagues and I wish you were my customers.
I have three customers who suffer from similar conditions and have saved their numbers on my mobile and text them when parcels come in and tell them not to queue but to stand in my eyeline and I take the parcel to them.

joanofarchitrave · 10/12/2011 06:32

Bea, that's really great to hear Smile

OrmIrian · 10/12/2011 08:10

Our old high-ceilinged po building was sold a few years back to save money. So now the town's crown po is in the back of a Martin's newsagent. There a 6 windows most of which are unmanned, they run out of stamps, road tax forms etc regularly. The queues are truly horrendous - it's so bad that I will drive 5 miles to the nearest small village one quite often. The situation is so bad that the most easy-going customers are reduced to toe-tapping and rolling their eyes and the stressy ones start to steam and rant! By the time we reach the tills it's inevitable that some people will behave like dicks and occassionaly I am sure the staff respond in kind. It isn't their fault. The whole situation is absurd.

DoingTheBestICan · 10/12/2011 09:01

Our local po is a bit hit & miss,the manager is lovely there & works really hard,always pleasant & knows everyones name,however she has a woman working with her who is a really lazy,horrid bitch.
If you go in & happen to go to her window she will not do more than 5 letters/parcels,she will do 5 then make you go back to the end of the queue,noone else does this just her.
I sent a pair of really expensive boots last Winter,sold through ebay,asked for them to be sent recorded delivery,i had other parcels too & she managed to send them on normal delivery so of course the buyer then sends me an email a few days later,i never got them.So i had to refund her & claim it back from the po.
She never smiles ever & refuses to help anyone,i did my ds' passport through them last summer & she filled the form in wrong,so it came back,i went in to sort it out & luckily the manager was in,she checked it again & didnt charge me for it.

carabos · 10/12/2011 09:06

Most of the staff at our quite large post office are pleasant and helpful enough. However, they are dangerously incompetent, lie (pleasantly) when challenged about their incompetence and often end transactions because they just don't know what to do and don't know how to use their systems find out.
It's very cosy in there though - dogs in baskets behind the counter, cushions on their chairs, biscuits, half dead plants etc.

BlueCat2010 · 10/12/2011 09:13

The online postage has been having problems so I have been going to our local PO a lot over the past couple of weeks. Having observed customers using 1 & 2p's to buy stamps, asking endless questions with regard to E11 forms, customers with what seems to be 50 parcels and a queue out of the door I am not suprised that PO staff get grumpy!

In all fairness I have never experienced a grumpy, but I always know exactly what I want (I have a ruler thingy that has the slots in to let you know what size it is) and fill out the relevent forms before I go so maybe I'm an easy customer for them!

pigletmania · 10/12/2011 09:30

I would complain to the area manager tbh, that is not on, very poor shoddy customer service. In all my 34 years, I have yet to encounter a rude Post Office staff, and I use it a lot for e bay etc.

carabos · 10/12/2011 09:30

And is this just me, or do you think you should be given the choice between plain stamps and xmassy ones when buying them in books? I hate the gaudy ones and don't want to be given those as default. If I want gimmicky stamps, I'll ask for them .

pigletmania · 10/12/2011 09:32

I like to think that this lady was the exception rather than the norm, no excuse at all, and being the manager Shock, she should be setting a good example to her staff.

Bellavita · 10/12/2011 09:36

The woman at our post office (at the back of the village shop) goes out for a fag break 30 mins after she has opened at 9.00am. This so bloody annoys me. How does that work eh?

HighHeidYin · 10/12/2011 09:55

I use the post office every day for sending out online orders for our business.

I use four different post offices regularly and all the staff are lovely and helpful.

tallulah · 10/12/2011 10:27

Where we used to live the manager at the local PO always acted like he was doing you a massive favour allowing you to use the PO. If you ever were in a rush to catch the last post at 5pm you could guarantee there'd be a huge queue and he'd be sat slowly doing paperwork and completely ignoring the customers. If you tried to interrupt him by saying that you needed to catch the post he'd give you a Look and tell you he'd be there in a minute. I'm sure he got a thrill out of it.

QueenOfFlamingEverything · 10/12/2011 10:40

Our local village post office staff are fan-bloody-tastic.

They love my baby and always argue over who should serve me and who should give him a cuddle Grin

And they have been known to open up specially if its outside their opening hours and you ask them very nicely.

Shame the numpties in charge have seen fit to cut the hours it opens to one afternoon a week due to lack of use Hmm which is frankly bizarre as it gets plenty of customers and is the only PO for five miles.

marriednotdead · 10/12/2011 10:57

Ok, I used to work in a Post Office. Most of the staff had been there forever and had an enormous sense of entitlement thanks to years of working with one of the union dinosaurs. Every time there were queues they moaned and huffed because they'd have to sit on the counter and work like the rest of us instead of skiving off to have tea/ fags or make personal phone calls.

Sadly for them the Post Office, like the banks, had to start competing for business by selling phone services, insurance etc. This meant smiling and attempting sales skills that were the complete antithesis of everything they had ever believed in. So now some of them scowl and work slower in protest.

They hate ebayers because the transactions are lengthy and it you get two in at the same time, it brings the queue to a grinding halt which means EVERYBODY moans. Just my perspective you understand Xmas Wink

Bethanya · 14/05/2013 15:01

Hi, this is my first time posting on here, but ive just had a very similar situation and am very upset! The very rude post office worker (who not only is the owner but secretery of the union) made me feel like a complete moron and working in a post office myself, am here to set the record straight. Post offices have a horrendous reputation but we are not all like this!! My dad has owned a post office for nearly 40 years and i am currently working for him. We are constantly being applauded for being so polite and lovely, we always have time for our customers and realise that not everyone is a postal expert! Sadly we are the minority and things need to change! Sorry you had a bad experience but please remember we are not all like this!

idococktailshedoesbeer · 14/05/2013 15:09

Three post offices near me in Didsbury, Manchester, all the staff are lovely and helpful. Think it's luck of the draw. Hate the queues sometimes though!

Lovecat · 14/05/2013 15:11

ZOMBIE THREAD!!!

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