When we asked Jana Mondelaers if she would like to have a career at bpost in the future, she just laughed: “No, not at all. I’m studying to be a kindergarten teacher as kindergarten kids have stolen my heart!” But to students looking for a weekend or holiday job, she can absolutely recommend the work she’s been doing for three years now.

How did it start? We caught up with her in early April at the end of her shift.

Jana Mondelaers: “I started – at the same time as my boyfriend Frederic – in the Easter holidays of 2019 when there were a lot of full-time employees and job students were few and far between. And I guess we just sort of stuck around here (laughs).

Jana, tell us: how does your day start here in our parcel sorting center in Mechelen?

Jana: “We work in two shifts. The first shift begins at 6 o’clock in the morning when the vans arrive with the parcels. All the parcels are then placed on the conveyor belt and scanned so they can be sorted for each postal round. At 7:30 another shift joins us. That is also the time our team leader gives us our round for the day; it’s then that we know which parcels we will be delivering. If on odd occasions, you’re not there to hear this it’s not the end of the world, but you do have to be there when your shift starts.”

 

“Then you start preparing for your round. You log in and scan your badge with your mobi, a sort of smartphone. That way bpost knows which postman has delivered the different parcels, if ever there are problems later. Then you prepare your documents: the address list, the papers to leave in the letterbox if customers aren’t at home ...”

And then you have to play a game of Tetris with the parcels in your car?

Jana (laughs): “Something like that. First you load your parcels into the car, and then you do your round following the order on the list. If people are not home, you can check out their delivery preferences: at the neighbors, at the post office, or in a safe place.”

Recently, you’ve also been delivering parcels in the ‘ecozone’. Is that a choice you’ve made?

Jana: “Yes, these are bpost’s automated depots that have been placed in Mechelen and the surrounding area. We deliver the parcels there and people can then pick them up. Or the other way around: we pick up the packages that people want to send. Our team leader is always open to change if there’s something you don’t like: bpost once proposed a bicycle round for me, but I didn’t have any training for that so they gave it to someone else.”

Finally, do you have any tips on what people should look out for if they too want to do this job?

Jana: “Be friendly, of course. And patient: not everyone is sitting behind their front door waiting for you to ring with a package so you have to wait long enough. What makes it fun is that 99% of the people are in a good mood when you come with a package, so that makes you happy too. There’s also lots of older people who speak to you, sometimes you even get  a ‘merci’! The combination of the social aspect with the job’s flexibility means that I want to keep on doing this student job at bpost for a while longer (laughs).