Not much if you apportion that to about 30 customers per officer. The post office I frequent is in a very residential area which means you would need to drive or take public transport before you arrive at a food centre so most times they bring sandwiches which means a cold lunch daily. In spite of all this, they greet each customer with a smile if not an actual "good morning/afternoon" and remain patient and cheerful throughout the transaction. I wouldn't have the patience that they have when dealing with difficult customers.
Today's visit was particularly bad - crazy Monday.......as the officer attending to me described it.
Apart from normal postal services, our post offices also offer payment facilities for bills,fines, licences, renewal of road tax, passport renewal and application and the very popular money transfer facility. This is especially popular with our guest workers. Each month, or each fortnight, these workers remit money back home via Western Union and some other funds transfer facility. It is a time consuming transaction, especially for a newbie sending money home for the first time, the address of the receipient needs to be verified, identification documents of the sender checked..........this takes a whole lot of time. I was late today...... arriving after 11.30 am and I was like the 12th person in the queue.....everyone ahead of me was either remitting money home or large packages via speedpost.....after about 10 minutes there were like a zillion (OK I exaggerate......20 maybe) people crammed inside the little post office. Each time someone sneezed or coughed, I cursed under my breath. Finally after a wait of approx 25 minutes, I was served and irrespective of the crowds and the workload, the officer still greeted me with a Good Afternoon and the Sr Officer looked up from across his counter and said Hello Belinda!
Once I was in the office at around 4.00 pm as I needed to send something off via Speedpost. I was also way back in the queue and I was wondering what were my chances of reaching the counter before 4.30 pm..........slim. Anyway, at 4.30 pm, the main door was locked BUT all of us already in the post office would be served. Apparently this is not uncommon. Sometimes they work till 6 pm or later as they have to do some other admin stuff tallying the $ etc. Still, they were able to smile and joke with each person who made an effort to conduct a conversation with them. Service with a smile......not just another campaign....it actually works in this post office.
Why am I blogging about it? I know for a fact who in SingaporePost follows my blog - *waving* Hi! - so this is just to show my appreciation to the wonderful, overworked, non-complaining officers at that special post office along East Coast Road.
Mr Salleh - you and your team rock!
btw - in Singapore, the post office remains open throughout normal working hours so the officers have to take turns to have their lunch which works out to very hungry peoople during the period 12 - 2 pm......and yet.......the usual adage "a hungry man is an angry man" does'nt apply here.
ps - just to be sure this goes to the right people, I've sent a separate email re. this post.
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