Following up my other post about the Surrey Leader, I have a few things to say about their sketchy delivery. And here I can’t fully blame the Leader. They must have a dickens of a time keeping delivery people employed because we keep getting notices in our mailbox that they’re looking for delivery people in our area. Sometimes weeks and months will go by without getting a newspaper, so that’s why I’m not too certain how many days a week its really delivered. I know its supposed to come on Fridays, with the Cloverdale Reporter inside, but it rarely arrives in my mailbox. Not that I care so much whether or not I receive the Leader, but I do like reading the Reporter because its style is more like how the Leader used to be many years ago covering community events and people who live in Cloverdale.
We had one good delivery person, a man in his thirties, this past summer. We regularly got the papers. But then he quit. Hopefully he found better work elsewhere and delivering the Leader was just a temporary situation for him. He was reliable, which is a whole lot more than I can say about any of the others. In the past couple of years there was one lazy sucker who’d deliver multiple copies of the Leader to my house. How many newspapers can I read? I just assumed he got paid by the paper and it was easier for him to dump multiple copies to some of his houses to make his route go faster. I stuck them in my recycle box. And then one day the delivery person, and I’m sure it was a kid, really ticked me off. In the summer we have designated days of the week and times we can run the sprinkler. I went outside and set the sprinkler in my front yard. From where it was set up, it was also getting our sidewalk inbetween the garden and house wet, including the area around the front door. When I came outside an hour and a half later to move the sprinkler, I had several soaking wet copies of the Leader sitting on my front doorstep. Now that kid had to run through the sprinkler in order to get the papers to that spot, so there’s no doubt in my mind that he knew the sprinkler was on. He could see it going back and forth, and the sidewalk and front door were wet. He could have put the newspapers in my driveway, four feet away from my front door. That area was dry, not being reached by the sprinkler. But no. He has to put multiple copies of the Leader on my front door mat. What a nasty, soggy mess. I picked it up and took it right to the recycle bin, only to discover that wet newsprint runs and marks up your hands and your clothes. I complained to the Leader about that. One soggy newspaper would have been bad enough, but a stack of them was another story.
That’s the only complaint I’ve made. Ever since then I’ve only received one copy of the paper delivered to my house. I don’t complain about not receiving the papers. This is one case where its better not to receive.
But what happens to the copies of the Leader that don’t get delivered? Its possible there is currently no delivery person in the area during that time. It seems the Leader goes through 5 or 6 delivery people a year in my neighborhood. I see a lot of things when I’m out walking my dogs. Over the years I’ve seen bundles of the Leader dumped in local ditches, in the alley that runs east and west between 177B and 179th Streets, behind 59th Avenue, in Cloverdale Creek, off 57 Avenue, close to 173 Street, and in the dumpster when I lived in Dogwood Gardens. Its very clear that the people who are getting paid per paper they deliver are finding it easier to dump them in mass quantities somewhere. I’m sure nobody complains that they’re not receiving the Leader.
Once again my copies of the Surrey Leader and Cloverdale Reporter that should have been delivered yesterday didn’t arrive. Though I did get the Leader this past Wednesday.
Hit or miss. That the delivery style of the Surrey Leader.
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