Thomson Local Directories have ended

We worked for Thompsons delivering for a couple of years but the wastage was phenomenal. We were told to deliver one book per doorbell but often books would be refused in flats, by people and addresses closed. Usually porters at flat refused our leaving any books or allowed us to leave a dozen. We found our car cluttered with unwanted books.

We were given our contracts when we went to collection points and the people loading insisted on counting every book on the contract into our car. Many contracts ran on for weeks and when we went back to collect more books we usually had many books left over. After this happened a couple of times the manager at the loading started suggesting we were not doing the job properly and had to return; yes, that's right, force the books onto people or slip them in when the porter was not at his desk.

It was not uncommon to find piles of untouched directories including the previous years Thompsons on our rounds.

Faced with a situation where we had to chose between quietly disposing of books or losing our jobs by being honest and realistic we were forced to choose the former. We soon found that everyone was doing the same rather than risk arguing with the managers.

We were also told we could not leave books in piles at doors to flats but had to go inside and distribute them. fine in theory but nobody would let us in so we simply did not leave any and would put them directly in the nearest bin rather than have them cluttering up our car and of course we could not take them back.

Much to our surprise, despite back-checking, Thompsons never pulled us up on why no books were delivered at these locations.

Basically Thompson were out of control wasting time and money trapped in their own bubble of refusing to face the reality that a very high percentage were not wanted or undeliverable and forcing the books onto contracted deliverers like us with a hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing attitude to what was obvious to everyone else, that a large percentage of the books were being systematically wasted through being unwanted, not delivered or deliberately scuttled like stinking fish by those lumbered with them because the company could not face reality.