The Souff Afrikan post hoffice

[adrianh]

Eish...

So, on the 2nd of April we send a registered and insured parcel to a customer in Boksburg. Today the customer phones and asks what happened to his parcel. Ok, so I phone around a bit and track it to a postal hub around that area. The parcel seems to be stuck at the hub. So I duly phone them and speak to a really helpful young lady. She quickly traces the parcel and confirms that it is at their office. She says that the people who are supposed to do street deliveries are on strike and that she is scared to put it out for delivery. She says that it doesn't help to send the parcel back up to the higher hub because then it would get returned to me. So I ask what she thinks I should do; she says that the best would be to ask the customer to collect the parcel from her personally because that is the only way that we can be sure that the customer gets the parcel. She then goes on to tell me how gatvol she is of the striking workers because of the disruption they cause.

Ok, well at least there is one postal worker who cares. We are going to reach a point in this country where the "workers" are going to put themselves out of work due to their childlike actions. I've always been satisfied with the service that I receive from the post office but the time is drawing near to switch over to DHL.

[Justloadit]

Yep strike till you have no job. I am seriously considering my manufacturing process, should I continue, or cut the losses. Retrench all and work from home, I will save about R100K a month if I do.mmmmmmmm looking better every day

[adrianh]

A friend of mine ran an electronics assembly factory in CT. SMD part placing, wave soldering, the whole works. He had so much theft and nonsense with the unions that he did retrench the whole lot, sold all the machines and moved all the manufacturing to China. What they don't seem to realize is that there is a limit to all things. Push to hard and you lose it all. Another person I know is selling up two electronics supply shops and moving back to the UK, he's also had enough of all the local nonsense. The shop gets burgled, so he puts CCTV outside. It didn't take long for him to become the proud owner of a video of a person wearing a hoodie stealing the cameras. He then moved the cameras to the second floor. The staff was robbing him blind, he once remarked that led technology is so advanced that they've even grown legs. Packets of 500 leds would not make it from the harbour to the shop. He also put CCTV in the shop, not to catch the customers but to catch the staff...they quickly figured out where the blind spots were and also took to speaking afrikaans on the shop floor. It got so bad that he sold off a division of the business and then also got rid of some of them. He slowly replaced all the staff but that didn't help much. Then his house got broken into again...and that was the last straw. He says that he hopes the shops get sold off but if they end up being closed down then that will be ok too.

[wynn]

A few years ago a furniture factory in EL was paralised by striking workers who just refused to negotiate a reasonable wage based on the performance of the business so the owner retrenched the lot and closed the business.
Luckily he owned the building, so he converted it into a number of small workshops and now he spends one day a month collecting rents and gets a contractor to do any maintainance that he can't handle himself, what a pleasure.