I just got offered the bike courier job!

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It’s the first job interview I’ve done sweaty and dressed in lycra!! 😀

Courier Systems bike crew operate mostly within central London (W1 and W2). Almost all runs will be under 4miles. For a single package run of less than 4mi, I’ll be paid 2.50UKP. If it is longer than 4mi (very unlikely according to Greg) then there’s an extra 70p per mile. If I work 9-6 for the whole 5 days I get a 10% bonus. Yippee! 😛

I was told the average number of runs in a day is 20. So that’s 50UKP/day.. BUT.. that’s the average for the riders that actually know the streets and know what they are doing!

On top of that, the bad news is that I have to pay 100UKP before I start as an “equipment deposit”.

The further bad news is that I also have to pay 25UKP per week for 4 weeks (to 100UKP total) as an equipment deposit.

The further bad news is that I have to pay another 300UKP, at 10UKP per week, as… you guessed it.. an equipment deposit! Sheesh! This gear they hand out is expensive!!!

Basically this is going to totally suck because I’ll end up in the red for the first few weeks (or more) paying off the equipment! That’s if they don’t fire me first for being so slow..

They use some kind of PDA device to track packages and I assume radios, to track the riders. We (there was another guy there for a van driving job) were shown inside the control room. Seems like quite a big company. I was told the bike fleet was around 30 riders.

Not exactly the role I had in mind when I arrived here, but what the hell! It will give me something to do during the day while I wait for some I.T. company to start paying me 300UKP/day. I’m thinking the only reason they offered it to me was because we are heading into winter and not many people want to ride 9am-6pm in the wet, the dark and possibly the snow? I’m not even sure I want to do it! I blame “daniel s” 😛

Anyway, after hearing the terms and thinking about it I wasn’t sure it was worth the hassle of starting out, especially if I continue to apply for I.T. work in the meantime, but they called me in the afternoon to say I could start next week. Fuggit – I said “yes”. On Monday I’ll go in for some training and then start proper on Tuesday.

Of course, just after I accept, I receive my first call from an agency about a database job in Essex..

14 thoughts on “I just got offered the bike courier job!”

  1. Ok, if you pay up front for this ‘equip’ deposit and take an IT job, are you refunded the deposit?

  3. Sounds almost like a scam to me[1].

    Make sure you get *absolutely* everything in writing first.

    [1] Someone on ASR, of all places, was scammed by a "publishing house".

    And geez, 2.50UKP for 15 minutes work (or 30 mins — is the 4 miles including the return journey?)

    I’m not going to be courriering in London!

  4. I’m trying my very, very bestest to make sure I don’t sign anything that could make the deposits disappear for good.

    What is ASR?

    15min work you reckon? You are overestimating there a little! How fast do you think I can ride in inner city traffic? How long do you think it will take for me to read the map and work out where to go? How often will I get lost per run and have to stop and check the map? How long to stop to find the correct building, lock up somewhere and then negotiate my way into and back out of the building? Then there is also standby time, ie. they might not always have a package for me.

    I’ll be lucky if I do three jobs per day!

    But.. "it’s a laugh, innit?" 😀

  6. "My sense of humour.. oh NO!"

    *frantically pats pockets*

    "Has anyone seen a sense of humour around here? Quite scruffy and prone to cynicism?"

    "Anyone?"

  7. Works in IT, doesn’t know ASR!

    http://tinyurl.com/18r

    Young people these days , I don’t know… 😉

    Unless, of course, that’s the big secret.

    No-one that posts (or lurks) in ASR, has ever actually worked in IT.

    That’d be a hoot.

  8. Type "asr" in Google and it ‘only’ returns 3.5 million pages. Sorry if I don’t know which it is.

    "Works" in IT could be stretching the truth – a.b is quite time consuming ya know! LOL 😛

  9. Is that tinyurl pointing to about:blank?

    Anyway, I can’t actually tell you what ASR is, because you are out of shoot-to-kill range, so I’ll just have to say "scary devil monastery", to narrow down your search results.

    P.S. Definitely a place to lurk before you psot.

  10. alt.sysadmin.recovery?

    http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/~i…

    Oh, I actually used "scary devil monastery " and it appears my guess above was correct. I’m not a sysadmin and spend too much time on bike forums to know anything about asr. So I claim total innocence 🙂

  11. Ssssh, but I’m not a sysadmin either. Just my personality type fits in well with that mob (ie, I like hooking up 20,000V LARTS to lusers). I was able to see the danger of being a sysadmin before being offered any jobs, so was able to refuse them in time before any irrepairable damage had been done.

  13. I remember reading BOFH many years ago. I have my courier equipment: jacket, two jerseys, radio and charger, clipboard and paper, HUGE courier bag. I can’t believe I start tomorrow.. sheet!

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