Work Area Manager
Royal Mail

Augustus A

0.00.00 My name is Augustus A. My job title is Work Area Manager. When I left university with my management degree I applied for jobs in management. And I did get a job at one of the retail outlets and I did that for 13 years. When I got my, my wife didn’t want me to go working Saturdays / Sundays, Saturday / Sunday so she asked if I could just look for something else and that’s when I started at Royal Mail. In the whole I’ve been with Royal Mail about 15 years.

0.00.30 I started as a postman in ones were delivery office and two years down the line an opportunity came as an acting in the office where I was working. Our job is to make sure we process the first class on our shift and dispatch on our shift and then it goes into delivery offices for delivery the following day. I love the managing and leading. You are the one that’s coming out with the vision sharing. You are the one that’s coming out with the goal setting. You are the one that’s motivating. So to combine the two keeps me coming to work every day.

0.01.00 My school days were spent in a boarding house, kindergarten, all the way up to I finished my O Levels, I was in a boarding school. I was a very shy guy in school but I was very sporty. I was in the boxing team. I loved school basically. I loved school. I loved learning. I loved learning new things. If I had the opportunity to go back to my school days I would do it over again. I came to England to do my A Levels and then I went to uni here. I did not have to work at all. My father did not believe in that.

0.01.30 He wanted us to, all his children to get education, good education. You go there to do it, cos he believed that working and learning doesn’t go together, cos once you get used to money then you soon to forgot your academic. My father so far as he’s concerned, if you’re having an education and he wanted you to have, then that’s okay. But dad is an aeronautic engineer and my mum is a midwife and I don’t like the… so I didn’t go into my father’s field which is something he hasn’t forgiven me for.

0.02.00 But the fact that I came out with a degree, he was quite happy with this. He just said oh I would have loved you to follow in my footstep and I couldn’t do it, so maybe in my next life I will be able to an aeronautic engineer. In the next five years I love to see myself in a pulpit, being a preacher. Ghana is a predominantly Christian country and Sundays we go to school and then every six months we have to help the local parishes and tidy their houses for them. It’s part of all our upbringing.

0.02.30 So that’s where I developed the passion, but I didn’t think anything at all about it. It’s just what I do in my spare time. I’m reading. I’m researching. I’m getting information ready for when I’m teaching cos I do teach every Sunday. Then I was asked why don’t you consider preaching? And then I started it and then I find out I was good at it, they said oh you should keep it up and now they’re talking to me about response for me to do the theology. So it’s something that I’m considering. I haven’t given in the go ahead yet but I’ll just, I haven’t think about it.

0.03.00 In Ghana there was one guy that really inspired me and I said earlier I was a very good boxer and one of the guys that I started boxing with in my spare time was somebody that became really famous. He fought all over the world. He fought in Las Vegas. When I’ve been in the ring with him I’ve got the better of him and I said to myself what if I had been a boxer, would I have been as good as he is? He didn’t have good education but he was determined to succeed in the field.

0.03.30 And he really got all the way the top. If you take a chance in life you stand a chance in life. But if you don’t take it, you don’t know it. So he took it and he made something of his life. So, which is good.

0.03.41