I'm Still Here

Despite scorching heat, violent thunderstorms, tornados, and power outages I’m still here.  The weatherman has been disgustingly accurate about his severe weather predictions of late.  Apparently the storms in the Algonquin area of Ontario were so bad that cottagers are being advised to stay home as the power is out and many roads are impassible; and will be for weeks.  Down here by Lake Ontario we were more fortunate.  Wednesday I got an opportunity to experience the great outdoors first-hand when a fellow worker’s car broke down and I went out to help her finish her route.  The air was blazing hot and the humidity made it worse while a towering thunderhead bore down on us from the North-East.  Luckily we only had a few huge splotches of rain but just a mile or so east of us the roadway I drove on my way home was ponded with rain water.  At present the sky is a cerulean blue and the air a pleasant 60º F.  At least all those storms served to clear the air. 

 

Figured out how to post my blog via E-mail this morning so I’m doing catch-up by using MS Word as my word-processor and its E-mail client to send the results.  This week has been another busy one.  Historically summer has been a time of lower mail volumes and light flyer loads but this summer is by no means normal.  Along with the severe weather we’ve experienced little slow down in mail and an unprecedented amount of advertising.  This may be good for Canada Post’s bottom line but it’s hard on her employees.  The arrival of Ikea’s Fall and Winter Catalogue this week just served to deliver the coup de grâce—at least it’s only for apartments but that’s fat consolation for those with apartment buildings delivered door to door with uncooled corridors. 

 

I spent Monday and Tuesday working on Minutes for the Police Consultation Meeting on Tuesday.  We spent a lot of time hearing about drug abuse in high schools, students arriving at school without breakfast—in Oakville because they’re too lazy to make it, not because the food isn’t available, arriving back from lunch drunk or high, smoking on school premises, loitering at local malls, and the need for parental support. 

 

One way or another I’ve worked overtime almost every day this week.  Somehow there seems to be something that just has to be done as I’m about to leave every day.  God forbid anyone at Canada Post do any advanced planning.  Thursday we had to make a trip to another office to do a pickup.  Of course they didn’t even have the materials we were to take ready when we arrived. 

 

The biggest stir of the week was the arrest of one of our RSMC’s for having in her possession customer’s mail she hadn’t delivered.  Yes I’m glad she got caught, but this kind of behaviour reflects poorly on all of us.  Unions may have a duty to protect all employees, but working in a union shop sometimes means working around slackers who should have been fired years ago but aren’t because the process is so complicated supervisors don’t pursue it unless they absolutely have to.  If it weren’t for managers who arbitrarily abuse their powers, unions wouldn’t need to take such tough stands.  The fact that our present contract has ballooned to over 800 pages speaks for itself.