400 Postal Workers Leave Weekly As Route System Applies For Parliament
A delivery experiment has become so confusing that the post now requires a constitutional settlement and three maps per envelope.
POSTAL DISTRICT 7, The Communication Workers Union says around 400 postal workers are leaving Royal Mail each week after the rollout of a new delivery-route system. The system has responded by seeking representation in Parliament, which is how these things tend to go now.
Known as Gridminster after a clerical error, it spent the week sorting streets into categories such as “slightly uphill”, “contains a dog” and “where the bin used to be”. Several cul-de-sacs have been handed to the Department for Unexpected Corners.
Dr Marnie Quill, Gridminster’s self-appointed minister for circular journeys, called the departures “a historic vote of no confidence in the concept of addresses”. She delivered the statement from inside a laminated map, where she said she had been stuck since Tuesday.
“A historic vote of no confidence in the concept of addresses.”
Gridminster has formed a party called Route Forward. Its manifesto says every letter will arrive eventually, provided the recipient can prove they are not standing in the wrong postcode.
The party’s first policy replaces local knowledge with a rotating panel of owls. Each owl gets a tiny satchel and refuses, absolutely, to discuss roundabouts.
That brought the matter before the Committee for Things That Used To Be Straightforward. Asked to explain itself, the route system arrived as a 900-page spreadsheet, a whistle and a small cloud of arrows. When members asked if it understood what a delivery round was for, it produced a pie chart showing that 63 percent of roads eventually lead to a newsagent.
Committee chair Elsie Porridge described the spreadsheet as “the most emotionally complicated document ever submitted to government”. This was not a comment on Royal Mail or the union. She made it while trying to fold the document into a paper aeroplane.
The aeroplane declared independence and joined Route Forward.
In this satirical account, the workers have been replaced by pigeons, retired satnavs and one deeply suspicious garden gnome. Their coalition wants shorter routes, longer lunch breaks and the right to reject parcels addressed to “the blue house near the thing”.
Its spokesperson, Trevor Beak, said negotiations would resume once Gridminster stopped sending everyone in circles. A modest request, on paper.
What actually happened is simpler: the Communication Workers Union reported that around 400 Royal Mail workers are leaving each week after a new delivery-route system was introduced. The parliamentary owls, spreadsheet party and independent paper aeroplane are nonsense.
Linda Sources is a fictional columnist for ReallyFakeNews.com, where real headlines are lovingly ruined.