NEW POST OFFICE.....ALARM

[DORIAN]

I  had a long discussion yesterday with two employees who will be salaried by Post Office counters whilst  working for Mcolls .looking at the proposed lay out, we have a disaster in the waiting. if anyone has visited the shop on a Saturday, whilst those paying their paper Bill or collecting parcels will understand how long the ques become, this will of course be exasperated by Post Office customers. One of the employees, who has worked in other areas has said, that thr Westbury clientele are the most impatient and rude!!
so lets hope that Mcolls see the light and occupy a larger unit before the opening of a welcome Post Office to our town

[baldy]

The queue will end up running outside under the canopy.

[Shizzy]

oh dear, not sure this shop will be big enough. I thought the original requirement by the Post Office was it had to be a 2 counter operation. Has this now changed?

[baldy]

yes

[Shizzy]

Any timescale for this?

[Bobbyt]

Think it opens as a post office on the 15th of March

[DORIAN]

correct
not wishing to upset our newcomer, but it was the fact that the employee that worked in bath, Bristol and Andover felt the westbury clientele the worst he had come across!!!! i do hope they find a better premises!!!!

[Shizzy]

Think it opens as a post office on the 15th of March

Thanks, I am assuming then it is just a simple PO facility like at The Ham, where the member of staff flits between serving fags and weighing parcels.

[DORIAN]

well three have had training, but the staff are as concerned as i would be, but hey ho, lets hope for the better eh!

[John GL]

I'll probably carry on using Fairfield Farm College, which is roughly the same distance away (about a mile).  That's equally cramped, with a single counter, but less likely to have long queues.

[baldy]

As John GL will already know, its worth remembering that the sub-PO in Dilton Marsh has a terrible habit of suddenly closing at 1pm every day for 30 minutes for lunch, regardless of how long the queue is.

You are told that the till is closing about 15 minutes beforehand. In the middle of last December, I joined a long queue at 12.20 thinking that would be OK, but actually I was still 3rd in the queue when the till closed at 1pm. I was so disgusted that I vowed to go to Warminster PO from then on, at least during the pre-Christmas period ...

[John GL]

Well, for a considerable time there have been prominent notices to tell customers about the half-hour lunch break.  Accordingly, I go there well before or after the stated times.  Long queues seem to be rare - certainly I've never waited anything like forty minutes.  I generally use the Post Office several times per week.  Never seen any impatience or rudeness among the customers, either.

[baldy]

Yes John, I saw the notices saying that the PO closes at 1pm but the problem is that the staff do not manage the queue in the period leading up to the closure, except to say about 15 minutes before it closes that it will close at 1 ... when people have already been queuing for ages ....

So, when the queue is quite long during the pre-Christmas period, it would make sense for the staff to stop people joining the back of the queue about an hour before the closure instead of leaving it for folk to queue for ages (thinking they will get served in time) and then find that actually the queue moves at a snail's pace and so they should not be trying to queue at all in the hour or so beforehand etc ...

[John GL]

Well, all I can say is that I haven't seen any of these problems.  The longest I've ever had to queue is about a quarter of an hour.

[Dana Scully]

I can't see it working in the newsagents, there is no room in there as it is, will it be at the back of the store? there is certainly no room at the front near the tills. we need at least 3 counters for it to work, and that will cause long queues at certain times. I think it will be classed as a main post office, so that means a booth for driving licence/passports probably, plus they will need a photo booth,where is it all going to go? I can see it working if the close the newsagents completely but surely they cannot run both businesses in that tiny little shop?  I will continue to use Fairfield, the cashiers are helpful and frindly, and I love to support our local special needs college.

Oh if only Wstbury had, for instance, an empty bank for it to go, but wait! we have 3!!!! all perfect for the job but of course they will never be used, I think that the powers that be would rather keep them empty.