Lara works as a mail deliverer in the Helsinki area. Her workday begins at noon with preparations indoors when she loads a trolley with mail. When the mails to be delivered are ready, Lara starts her own delivery route. The delivering takes 6-7 hours, after which she returns to the pick-up point and cleans her trolley before leaving home. While mail delivery is for the most part physical work, preparations must be made carefully so that delivery work runs smoothly. Lara says that this side of the work surprised her: “It has surprised me how much work is done in the background before mail is dropped into a customer’s mailbox. I didn’t realize it before. There is also quite a bit to do along the route, when you are dealing with machine-sorted mail, manually sorted mail, and ads. The work requires precision in order to take the right mail bundles and put everything in the right order”.

When Lara started to work, she immediately got to practice the work in practice: she and her instructor went to deliver mail. As she learned the work and her route, she began to deliver her own route independently. Learning through practice suited Lara well: “In the beginning, I learned really fast since the orientation happened while working. There aren't a lot of work-related questions anymore, except for some special situations, but then you always get help from colleagues”. Sometimes a colleague can still be on the route with her if there is a lot to deliver. Although Lara works mostly by herself during the day, she meets colleagues before and after the route at the pick-up point. Lara has also gotten to know other summer workers, of whom there are several in the same location. “It was a nice surprise that there were several of us summer workers here!” Lara rejoices.

Lara likes that work and working days are very clear: when you leave the workplace, the work ends there. One of the best things about summer work at Posti is that the work is done outside. She likes that at the end of the day, you feel in your body that work has been done. Lara tells that there is free time before and after work which is nice. In addition, she likes that the work takes place on weekdays, so you can freely plan other activities for the weekends for the whole summer.

Lara is happy that she sees the result and purpose of her work concretely every day. “It’s fun when somebody comments behind the door “yeah, Donald Duck!”, Lara laughs. Despite working independently, there are plenty of encounters with customers which Lara enjoys. For example, one customer asked Lara one day if she was a summer worker since he hadn’t seen her before. Then he said it is nice to meet her. “These encounters make you feel that I am an important part of that building,” Lara says.