the post office and whsmith

[Scarlett]

What is going on with these shops?! I went into WHSmith and the shelves were practically empty. Today I bought my CD-Rs and cases from Double Drive Computers as WHSmith was so rubbish! The post office had 2 members of staff on and a massive queue. The "shop" was closed down, only selling lottery tickets and stamps. There was nothing to buy in the line of cards, books, stationary etc.
Is this the same everywhere? Is this due to the recession?

[Buenchico]

W H Smith have been struggling for years. They'll almost certainly go the way of Woolies within the next few months.

Post Offices vary widely. Some principal offices have never really done anything other than providing their core services. (i.e. they've offered very little, if anything at all, on the 'shop' side of things). Some sub-POs operate primarily as shops, where the postal business is just an extra service. They each allocate their staff according to the demands on each side of the business.

Queue lengths seem to vary greatly between post offices. Last Monday I was working on a temporary job in Southend. I wanted to post my grandson's birthday present but when I went to the main P.O. the queue was out of door and down the street. I asked someone who was leaving how long they'd queued for and they said "just under an hour". That was no use to me, since I only had half an hour's break.

Two days later I tried again to post that present. I walked into the main PO in Halstead (Essex) to find that there were three staff all waiting for customers. (i.e. no queues at all). Interestingly, that Post Office is within a very quiet branch of W H Smith!

Chris

[spudqueen]

I've just started working as a post office counter clerk at a village post office which is located in the village shop. There's no way the shop staff can work in the post office as they do not know how to use the post office computer system. The queues vary not only from day to day but from hour to hour. Only a few days ago I was really quiet all day until 3pm when I suddenly had a queue of 8 people and was busy the rest of the afternoon until I shut at 5.30pm. If only they had spread themselves out during the day they wouldn't have had to queue!