Pulling into Envoy House, I felt ready and raring to go for my early morning shift. But as I donned my reflective bib and sported the iconic royal blue, I was suddenly struck by first day nerves – which hadn’t been helped by the extra coffee I had devoured en route. It was 6am. I had been allowed a lie-in, thankfully not required to join some of the true troopers who see in each day’s freight trucks at 4.30am.
By the time that I had clocked in, the well-oiled machine that is the Guernsey Post sorting office was already in full swing, and it felt like I had entered Santa’s workshop.
Parcels from all over the world – mostly via Amazon, Evri and Royal Mail – were pouring in. Happily being received and meticulously sorted by dozens of busy staff, who were all laughing and joking as they went. Though not elves, I was surrounded by creatures of a similar nature – they all appeared to be ‘morning people’ – and it was impossible not to catch their buzz.
The tempo was fast, the energy was high and everybody seemed to be in the perfect place at the perfect time and totally in charge of their designated tasks, which dovetailed beautifully into the next.
Everybody that is, apart from me. Like a spanner in the works, I awkwardly moved against the seamless flow of the system.
Tall, fully-loaded trolleys – or ‘yorks’, as we posties call them – glided from left to right, steered by confident drivers, using the building’s strategically-placed mirrors to guide them round corners.
No matter how hard I tried to remain spatially aware, I seemed to constantly be in the way. However, my interruption could not have felt more welcome. My amateur trajectory had already been calculated, and each encounter was met with a genuine smile, a polite ‘good morning’ and a patient give-way, as the skilled, friendly team graciously accommodated their newbie.
My buddy was Dawn Gallienne, head of corporate engagement, who had carefully planned my immersive adventure. Being taken on a tour of the post office is one of those exciting things that we normally only get to experience as young children on a school trip. But as a grown-up – and keen online shopper – I appreciated the peek behind-the-scenes now more than ever, and was immediately taken aback by the magnitude of it all.
At the very least, it is comforting to know that I am not the only islander who enjoys her Amazon Prime account, and my name is not plastered on some wall-of-shopaholic-shame, as my dad had implied.
In fact I was assured there is no wall-of-shame. Here, we are all celebrated as a loyal customer base.
On that day alone back in June, just over 15,000 parcels and over 11,500 letters were received, the average daily amount. Last year’s busiest day was 16 December, when nearly 24,000 parcels were delivered.
My first port of call was the same as the parcels’ – to the induction belt, where Chloe Abbott was unloading cages full of brown, smiling boxes straight from the trucks, and feeding them one-by-one onto a large, impressive parcel machine.
‘I need to get each parcel within the parameters, with label facing up and make sure everything is as it should be,’ she said.
‘If things are over 20kg, for example, they can’t go on. But most parcels will go on the machine. We start at 5am and keep going until about 8.30am. I’ve been here about five years and love it. There’s a great vibe, and loads of different opportunities. I’ve definitely noticed an increase in parcels. My UKAddress has made a big difference, because nothing’s really off limits to us now – I got some bougie Easter eggs this year.’
At 50 metres long, the OptiSorter runs almost the entire length of the office, and sorts 6,500 parcels per hour. Though it looks like it was always there, the substantial machine was installed only three years ago, at the end of 2023. It took three months to build and cost £1.8m. Before then, the tens of thousands of parcels were sorted by hand, but Covid speeded up the need for company development. During lockdown, the means of consumerism on-island was forced to significantly change, and most islanders quickly grew accustomed to their convenient new way of shopping. Most of us never looked back.
‘It’s been just over an hour, we’ve gone through 7,000 parcels and 90% of that will be Amazon,’ said Ben Hunter, who was showing me the ropes at the next station – sweeping.
‘I bought five things off Amazon already this week, so I’m just as bad,’ he said.
Once the parcels are loaded onto the machine, they are scanned, weighed and sorted at volume. The OptiSorter can decipher even hand-written addresses, and divides the parcels by their destined postcodes. With a split-chute design, the parcels are sent down the many rows of large slides for collection.
With about 20 split-chutes to his section, Ben spends his morning walking up and down the base of the slides, sweeping the relentless pouring of goods, and sorting them onto yorks in specific rounds for the delivery drivers to collect. The island is currently split into just over 80 delivery rounds, which drivers pivot around.
‘It’s like playing Tetris, you want to load the yorks neatly,’ he said.
‘It’s quite relaxing because you don’t have to think about it. You put your headphones on, listen to a good podcast and get your steps in. It’s never stressful, but it does get busy. I’m finished by 8.30am, ready to set up for my other job – I have a mobile bar called Ben’s Bar – or I finish for the day by 12pm, and enjoy my freedom.’
Ben showed me that smaller packets slide down the opposite chutes of his section. These are able to fit through letterboxes and can therefore be collected and packed in with the mail. While picking up each package, I couldn’t help but feel second-hand excitement for its recipient. Someone on the island had been waiting for this very item, and would come home to it today. This dedicated team around me would make sure of it.
‘I love working here,’ said Ben. ‘It’s great having a good chat with the guys, we’ve know each other for ages. But it can get tedious if you haven’t got headphones.
‘If one of us forgets them, we just look at each other and laugh – you’re in for a long three hours. But they look after us and that’s why so many of us have been here so long.’
A chart in the hallway proudly showcases each Guernsey Post employee and their length of service. With most clocking up over 20 years, some of its longest-serving members have been at the company for over 40 years. After practising my best Tetris moves loading the yorks efficiently with Ben, I gained his stamp of approval, and it was time to get ready for my delivery round.
Lawson Pipet has been delivering to the parishioners of Vale for most of his 29 years with Guernsey Post, and it was his electric van I would be boarding. He said he had been throwing up all morning. Fortunately, I soon learnt this meant filing the round’s letters into their pigeon holes at the office. Every house name and number has its own labelled pigeon hole. Once the mail was thrown up, we re-used our Tetris skills to load the van. Delivery drivers can choose the route of their round, and load their parcels accordingly. After nearly 30 years, it took Lawson about half an hour to organise and pack the 188 parcels we had that morning into his preferred order. He said he is averaging 200 parcels a day, but rounds in more condensed areas, like town, can have many more. Such drivers have to take multiple trips, to reload at the office. With the van prepped, and a boxful of letters and packets on my lap, we set off.
Our conversation on the road was intermittent, and heart-warming.
‘I feel like Santa Claus,’ he said, after jumping back into the driver’s seat to swiftly shift a metre down the road to the next stop.
‘And everybody loves Santa, right? The thing is, most of the bills now are on the internet, so you’re really only bringing the fun things – delivering the presents that they order.’
I hastily tried to use the scanner gun the way he had shown me, to prepare the next item for him, but I struggled to keep up. Just like at the sorting office, things moved very fast.
Lawson was in and out, and skillfully – ensuring each package was scanned, registered and securely dropped-off in a matter of seconds – he ran from van to front door and back. When it was my go, I soon learnt that even slotting a letter through a mail box required skill. I would embarrassingly stand there for what felt like hours, holding up my mentor, while I desperately tried stabbing flimsy envelopes through the surprisingly tricky slots.
Lawson joined Guernsey Post when he was about 20 years old, and though he was not expecting to stay forever, he has never wanted to leave.
‘Most of the team end up staying,’ he said. ‘I like being outdoors, meeting the people. And I don’t like change, necessarily. I know my job inside and out and that’s what I like about it. To some people that might be mundane, but not to me. I’ve been doing rounds in the Vale for about 26 years now. Delivering to the same houses for all that time – you build a rapport with people.’
This trusted, long-serving postie had an inkling just who would be in and who would be out, and exactly where they would like their goods left in case of the latter.
‘I enjoy the community aspect to it,’ he said.
‘You might go to an elderly person’s house and be the only person they’ve seen that week. And they’ll ask you to open a jar of beetroot or something for them – so you know, we have our uses as well.’
Lawson’s brief, jovial interactions with each resident, and respect around every empty household revealed that he knew his customers well. He also knew where every dog resided – and this he would relay to me with a clear, verbal warning: ‘A dog lives here.’ It was a serious heads-up to not put my hand through the letter box, or linger with the door open – he would often deliver for me at such homes. Lawson explained it was not just a cartoon cliche. Postmen are unfortunate triggers for a dog’s territorial instinct, and caution must be paid.
‘The other day I got chased by a chihuahua,’ he said.
‘You’re too right right I ran – the small ones are the worst ones. I’ve been bitten on the wrist once – it’s part of the job.’
At one property, Lawson’s demeanour changed. He was suddenly quiet, slowly creeping. I dreaded to think what kind of animal lived here, so I followed suit. But as we retreated, a dog barked and Lawson sighed.
‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I was trying to avoid that – the woman here has just had a baby.’
My respect for postmen has grown significantly since this experience.
Guernsey Post has a fleet of 100 electric delivery vans, and I’m now inclined to wave each time I pass one. The fleet has developed over Lawson’s years. When he started, they used bikes. As the volume of packages surpassed paper mail, vans became essential. And though Lawson crams his vehicle to the brim each morning, he said he would not want to drive anything bigger. After minutes on his round I understood why. Postmen weave fluidly between granite and traffic, keeping tucked out of the way. They often access awkward – and already occupied – driveways, and there is no room for error.
Still, Lawson prefers his van to the bike, but is pleased that one aspect from his cycling days remains.
‘I wouldn’t like to do my job in trousers,’ he said.
‘Luckily for me when I joined they’d just started allowing shorts year-round. Because when we were on bikes, if you got caught in a rain shower your legs would dry off fast, but your trousers wouldn’t. They’d cling to you, horribly. I think I’ve only ever worn trousers maybe three times in my 29 years.’
Back at the sorting office there was silence. An almost eerie serenity blanketed Envoy House, as what had felt like an infinite supply of parcels had miraculously left the building, and its workers with it.
I met with chief executive officer, Steve Sheridan, who has been in the role for just over a year, after serving as the company’s chief financial officer for the previous 10 years. He said the postal service is an ever-evolving business, and that is exactly why he loves it.
‘Every year is a year of transformation,’ he said.
‘It’s a great business, and you’ve seen that first-hand today in terms of the culture that we’ve got here – we’re really proud of that. We’ve got a loyal customer base,’ (see!) ‘and we’re very open and transparent with our staff. I think that’s important.’
He said the nature of the industry has changed significantly over his time at the company.
‘We’ve seen around a 60% decline in letter volumes in the last 10 years. But commercially, in that same period, we’ve seen about a 70% increase in parcel volumes. But the volumes are very different. We’re still handling around seven million letters a year – reduced from about 17 million. Whereas parcel volumes increase by about two million per year.’
Mr Sheridan said the slick in-house operation worked under a strict time-crunch with the combined help of various stakeholders.
‘The boat typically docks at about 4.30am, so we have a three-hour window,’ he said.
‘Our operation works on a number of levels, based on a number of businesses contributing to that. We’ve got a very reliable sea network – I think we had one day of disruption over the last 15 months, and that was Storm Goretti. The decision to withdraw the dedicated plane was to move us to a more efficient delivery model. People won’t see a difference. The resilience of the supply chain bringing product in by sea is exceptional. And our delivery partners – Woodside Logistics and Ferryspeed – how they pivot their own support to ensure we’re getting product coming into the building on a regular basis, really enables us to handle those daily volumes.’
Guernsey Post also delivers to Alderney and Sark, with a weekly boat service. Developments such as the OptiSorter aim to keep up with the Bailiwick’s growing demand.
‘Everything that comes into our building on a daily basis will be delivered that day,’ said Mr Sheridan.
‘Those are the standards we continually work towards.’
