Yesterday I had two delivery shifts. The first was a shorter one, delivering groceries on behalf of Morrisons. Simple and mostly straightforward.
The second was delivering solely for Amazon, in Cambridge. I’m not super keen on town deliveries. Country stuff suits me much better. Both occasionally present access issues. But towns, generally, in my experience, much more so.
And Cambridge more so than most, partic’ with the University (students in halls, porters in their lodges, unable or unwilling to be very helpful, etc.). Flats and other weirdly located places present issues of access vs time. I had a very troublesome instance of this yesterday.
What I’ve learned from these repeated experiences is that:
1) I have to take extra time to try and locate viable access routes (not made easier when customers don’t answer texts or calls!); 2) I must remain calm, even in the face of unreasonable folk (not necessarily anything to do with work, per se*); 3) If I can’t gain safe trouble-free access, within a reasonable time frame, return the package to the depot.
I hate doing the latter, as it can seriously impact on overall time taken/fuel consumed, etc, and thus affect earnings. But it’s preferable to nasty scenes with irate ne’erdowells.
* In yesterday’s instance, it was a busybody totally unrelated to the delivery, getting very hot and bothered about where I was temporarily (with hazard lights flashing; having made unanswered texts and calls to the customer) parked.