Pros
Cheap onsite shop,not agency Work,seeing the outdoors.occasional nice routes.being left alone to a certain extent,sometimes you will get an easy route and can finish an hour early,easy holiday booking process,the other drivers are very friendly as you are in the same boat as each other.
Cons
All the stresses and head aches of a multi drop job with heavy shopping and a camera watching you inside the vehicle and a strict yes man regime back at base. no lee way for genuine mistakes on the road and you can be treated like a donkey by customers AND the management. Be prepared to work HARD for around £300 a week take home (great if you enjoy hard work for low wages) believe me this is not a breeze pottering around delivering a few eggs,milk and bits of bread so just forget that idea! it's delivering 440-910kg (yes that nearly a tonne!) of shopping with up to 210 miles/ 25 . People are getting fatter, lazier and greedier so expect to be hauling lots of heavy crates of food and water/pop/beer cat litter/17kg bags of dog food to there door and into the kitchen if they want while some will look at you like your a peasant. it can be a very degrading job so leave your pride or self respect at home.its highly likely you may get a disciplinary at some point. You will deliver to plenty of Busy city centres and I do mean on a sat afternoon right in the centre to a high rise flats with poor or no parking.any parking tickets you get you will pay them.managers follow a set process script and at times it feels like they live to try and catch you out doing something wrong. If you are a YES SIR. NO SIR PLEASE BOSS THANK YOU FOR EMPLOYING ME kind of guy you will survive well, but any independent thinking or initiative on your part is frowned upon. you need to do exactly as your told..and I'm not joking. It was a real culture shock when I started,it feels like you are made to feel like a naughty school boy at times, it feels like they try to break you down to there way or the high way. shifts are as have been said very anti social,and your day off will be spent recovering. YOU ARE A BEAST OF BURDEN I have a hunch after working there a year possibly from all the heavy crates,if you follow the correct Woking practice you will be late back 90% of the time which isn't fun when you are on a late shift,plus if you get back early you lose your time gained having to wait in a que of on average 20-40 mins to wash and re fuel before having the vehicle scrutinised for any scratches or damage by a Marshall. it's nice when you get an easy route but this is rare! They try to run the place like your in an mobile office no consideration is given to the fact of the amount of variables that can happen being out in the road and from my experience it can seem a very oppressive regime full of miss trust and suspicion From what i seen and experienced They LOVE to use hind sight to give you a telling off,so if you make a mistake in the heat of the moment (when the company sat nav crashes or switches off in rush hour city centre leaving you clueless as to where you are going ) they may wait a few days then pull you in the office to go over something you may have completely forgotten about. By all means have a go but don't be under any illusion that you are valued. They may sack any one for the slightest thing and it appears it's usually the van camera that is most people's downfall. if you are lucky you may go straight to final written warning,depending on how severe they judge your alleged Breach of process. I honestly don't know why they think they are such a top company to work for, they really think people are that desperate possibly due to the recent recession, if you start you will see the astronomical turnover for your self. I've had much better jobs with employers who pay more for less work and who don't bang on about how great they are. looking back I wished I'd stayed with them! It's a shame as fundamentally it's a van driving job delivering grocery shopping and all that's needed is a polite attitude and a smile, but with all the extra unessesary rules,regulations and processes it makes it a lot more stressful than it needs be and as such puts a lot of people off.
