Picture Of SingPost Postman Eating on Bike Evokes Sympathy in S’poreans

SingPost has been coming under fire for the past few months.

For having irresponsible deliverymen who only deliver “Sorry, you’re not home” notes…

…for delivering the letters to one central postbox: the dustbin…

..and for delivering leaflets (that was paid to be delivered by a business owner) into the dustbin.

Yes, it’s not a good time to tell the class your daddy’s a postman if you’re doing show-and-tell.

You’d rather talk about your mom’s job instead.

But recently, this photo, uploaded by Facebook user Amirul Azam, went viral.

And it managed to evoke the sympathy of fellow Singaporeans.

SingPost Postman Eating on Bike

Uploaded on 21 Feb 2019, the photo was accompanied by a short, but powerful message:

He said that this is probably the postman’s first meal or break of the day and ask Singaporeans to appreciate our postmen even more.

“You can condemn Singapore Post for all their inefficient SOPs and lack of service, but please appreciate the individual Postman for doing their best in delivering letters to you.”

In other words, don’t shoot the messenger.

Floodgates Open

With that short, poignant message, netizens’ floodgates opened immediately.

One talked about his own working experience as a SingPost postman.

Don’t stereotype based on a few rotten eggs.

And, of course, something needs to be done about the management.

SingPost’s Promise To Singaporeans & Apology

After so many consecutive high-profile screw-ups, you know SingPost management can no longer sit back and relax.

So they didn’t.

They investigated and told Singaporeans that the reason why service standards had fallen, was because their postmen are overloaded with work.

“We deeply apologise to our customers for our service failures…and we have heard their complaints and feedback; we feel their frustrations and seek to win back their trust.”

Here’s are their “short-term” solutions to tackle immediate pain points:

• Hire more postmen (100 more) and redeploy 35 staff to become postmen (i.e. more postmen)
• Provide incentives to postmen when trackable items are delivered
• Provide OT pay for postmen who volunteer to deliver on weekday evenings and Saturday
• Increase staff and counters for parcel collection (oh, yes, this)
• Reduce non-core mail business such as the direct flyer business

And the CEO promised that with these solutions, Singaporeans will see a drastic improvement in SingPost’s service standards.

“The immediate measures we are announcing today will address the most pressing issues and provide an improvement in service quality over the next three to six months.”

Like my colleague said: “Let’s see whether we’ll still be receiving collection slips on July 2019.”

**All images from Facebook (Amirul Azam) unless otherwise stated.