![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/dfa5bd35ee353a18219b16bd4f1ed9c3.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Sisyphus at Royal Mail <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n by John Freeman<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve never seen Bernard so indignant. When I joined, Bernard told this \u2013 manager, Bernard laughs. We know We can\u2019t delay Bernard any longer. God, look down, and say why somebody Sisyphus at Royal Mail by John Freeman I\u2019ve never seen Bernard so indignant. It\u2019s the day after the strike. There\u2019s a backlog. I like my job, he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":640,"featured_media":14937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[2711],"class_list":["post-14941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2","tag-cwu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/640"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It\u2019s the day after the strike. There\u2019s a backlog.
I like my job, he told his manager,
I want to do it properly. I hate
leaving first-class letters at the depot.
I can take some out today and some tomorrow.
And if it takes me into overtime
you needn\u2019t pay me for the odd half hour.
But the manager tells him like a broken record,
sorry, that\u2019s how it is. Bernard isn\u2019t even
allowed to keep the mail in pigeon-holes
where it will be easier and quicker
to collect, ready for him in the morning.
But no, he\u2019s got to leave it in the trough
below, and as we talk we wonder whether
Royal Mail want to photograph it there
to show the volume of letters and packets
piling up and not being delivered,
turning the public against postal workers.<\/p>\n
not to use a ruder word about him,
although that\u2019s coming to sound obscene itself \u2013
I was asked to talk to customers,
take care of them, show them they were valued.
That\u2019s the way I\u2019ve always done my job
and I\u2019m not going to change now Royal Mail
doesn\u2019t care about anything or anyone
except the profits and the shareholders.
You ask people to pay ninety-five pence
for a first-class stamp and it drives me crazy
to know I could deliver all these letters
and you say I can\u2019t, but the broken record,
Mr Jobsworth Manager, just says sorry,
that\u2019s the way it is.<\/p>\n
he could have retired three or four years ago.
He didn\u2019t want to, but he\u2019s getting angry.
Here’s a line I could repeat talking about
so many jobs in whichever sector,
public, private, that increasing swamp
in between, privatised services:
the satisfaction I got from my work\u2019s gone.
Bernard tells us other villagers beg him
\u2018Don\u2019t retire!\u2019 He knows we don\u2019t want that
either, but today we can\u2019t repeat it
in the context of retirement getting
increasingly attractive, even though
it will break his heart, and ours, and reduce life
to something meaner and greyer, shrunken.<\/p>\n
They are very slowly working through it,
he tells us, but by the time we get there
we\u2019ll be at the next strike day \u2013 quite right too,
since Royal Mail won\u2019t play ball with us \u2013
and we\u2019ll be back again to where we started.<\/p>\n
who lives such a good and useful life as his
should be made increasingly desperate
by a world of profits and of managers.
We need a revolution. We need people
like Bernard to flourish and feel valued.
How can I start it? Just by bearing witness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"