Memories of 24 years in PPL by Petr Menšík

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On 1 August this year, Petr celebrated 24 years of continuous employment in PPL.

Do you remember your first day in PPL?
I remember it very well. I was taken on as an employee in the summer of 1996, although that wasn’t my very first day in PPL, because I had spent several months before that as a part-time worker in the central trans-shipment yard. At that time, Depo 01 and head office were based at Hůlkova 31 in Kbely. I remember all of my colleagues from that time. I would definitely even be able to remember their names. 

Which position did you start in and what was expected of you? 
I started in the position of afternoon dispatcher. My job was to handle the returning drivers and deal with all of the collections, place undelivered parcels in the storage cages, write these up by hand and send a fax to the receiving depots with a request for further specification. In the meanwhile, I handled collection notices by phone and wrote them up, as well as handling parcels sent to foreign countries, which involved a large amount of documentation. The employee who was supposed to train me up disappeared without warning after two days, so things were really fun.

What sort of equipment did you have back then and how did you sort parcels?
We had a fax machine in the office, a fixed telephone line, a PC (Windows 95) and on it “Balíková pošta” software by Transoft and even Excel where we entered the daily performance levels achieved by drivers. The tables were used as a basis for invoicing the carriers. We didn’t have the internet or even e-mail. Data exchange was performed only via diskettes which were brought to the depot by the drivers on the main runs. Although they did have scanners, they didn’t have mobile phones. They had to call from telephone boxes for information about where they were supposed to go to collect parcels. We printed consignment notes on dot matrix printers only. As far as handling of parcels was concerned, the only equipment we had was heavy post carts. No conveyor belts or any other equipment. When I look back on things now, it was actually even quite dangerous. Parcels were transported on lorries and we didn’t have any unloading ramps to even out the height difference between the floor of the hall and the bed of the lorry.

How many parcels did you handle back then?
We had ten lines for the whole region of Prague and Central Bohemia. We delivered roughly 800 parcels in a B2B regime only without cash on delivery. I remember the day we got all excited about having exceeded the threshold of 1,000 parcels for delivery.

What has changed most for you over this time?
There are lots of things. In fact, absolutely everything has changed. When I started with the company, I didn’t even know how to operate a fax machine. Who would be able to do so today? But seriously. It is incredible how far we have progressed over the course of those years, both technologically, but also in terms of the volume of parcels we carry. But despite that, I think that PPL has remained the same, in particular that everything is still all about the people.

Was the PPL brand visible on the streets back then?
The vehicles were already branded, they were visible and we proudly greeted out colleagues when we came across each other on our travels. We also had the logo on our company cars back then, something which I miss a bit these days.

In the past, most things were handled only at the depot (customer service, cash on delivery, etc.). How do you see centralisation of these teams?
When I started, I was an operations worker responsible for the storage cages, a handler, weigher, customs agent, dispatcher, claims officer and also an operator at the same time. When the depot moved to Malešice, two of us ensured operations in 12-hour cycles. Me and my colleague only handed over the keys to the depot to each other outside our homes, night/morning and afternoon shifts. The first operator started work with us then and the number of operators in the depot gradually increased.

With the arrival of the Avaya system, monitoring of local depot operators was assumed by central customer service. Operators were already managed systemically, trained and their performance started to be monitored and evaluated. An advantage was that the operators could see exactly what we were doing, they knew our processes and procedures, they communicated with the drivers. Everything is different nowadays. Centralisation of customer service became unavoidable as time went by and processes changed and were automated.

Did you ever feel like giving up and leaving PPL? What stopped you?
Yes, several times. But I never left. Probably because I like working with people and I am lucky that I always had and still do have some great colleagues in my team who made everything worthwhile.