H is for Human Being

Machines do lots of stuff these days. They can sort letters really fast. They can even sort parcels pretty good too. But you know what, most of the work is still done by human beings. Human beings open the postbox and collect your letters. Human beings drive them to the mail centre. There they get shunted between machines, by human beings. Then human beings drive them to the delivery office where human beings sort them ready for delivery, bundle them up and then human beings walk to your front door and put it through the letter box. A human being inputs the parcels into the PDA, stacks them in the back of a van and then drives from house to house. If you are not home a human being inputs your package into the cataloging system and shelves it. If you book a redelivery for your package a human being takes it from the shelf and labels it up for the next day, updates the computer system and puts it out for delivery. If you call and collect your package a human being greets you warmly and fetches it. Unlike the magic of the internet that happens almost instantaneously, these things all take time.

Royal Mail is now threatening to sack lots of these human beings who do this work, as if by magic the remaining human beings can do more work in their shift than they are already doing.

I'll just leave you to dwell on that.

Stay safe. Be kind. Workers of the world unite (you have nothing to lose but your chains).