“I have no idea what they do all day!” If we are honest, this is a sentence that many of us have heard at some time or have maybe even said. Looking from the outside, we often just do not see at all how much work other people have to do. Our mailroom, where far more goes on than simply putting stamps on letters, is a case in point. Our colleagues there often work under pressure, if several mailmen and parcel delivery people unload hundreds of letters and packages all at once. And all of these consignments that come in and go out have to be recorded digitally too. Often there is a lot of research work to do too, because letters are frequently incorrectly addressed or there is insufficient customs information on parcels.

The head of the mailroom, Cornelia Ribbentrop, has a sense of humor about her work, and her motto is, “Somebody has to do it.” And so, in the second edition of our podcast, she speaks with refreshing honesty about working in the mailroom, the oddities that the team has encountered and the things that make their job more difficult.

Our guest today

In the second episode of our podcast we are discussing the mailroom at the university with Cornelia Ribbentrop, the head of the internal mail service. Having started out in engineering, then in IT, and now in the mailroom, Ms Ribbentrop changed careers to land up working for the university’s mail service.

 *the audio file is only available in German

The Podcast to Read

Intro voiceover:  In die Uni reingehört. Der Podcast zur Arbeitswelt an der OVGU.

Dirk Alstein: A very warm welcome to the second edition of our podcast. My name is Dirk Alstein I work in the department of Media, Communication and Marketing here at the university. And, yes, as we have just heard, this is a podcast about the working environment at the university, which means that we will be looking repeatedly at the work that is done here and, in the best-case scenario, helping to achieve a better understanding among colleagues. But before we understand one another better, we need to get to know one another. That is why today there is no overarching topic, instead we want to introduce a department with which most likely everyone has had contact at some time: our mailroom. I’d like to warmly welcome the head of this department, Ms Ribbentrop. It’s nice to have you here.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Hello, I’m pleased to be here.

Dirk Alstein: Before we immerse ourselves completely in the world of parcels and letters and see if my antiquated image of the mailroom is actually still correct, perhaps we could talk a little about your personal career history. Have you always been in the mail business?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: No, no, I am what they call a career changer. I worked in an engineering firm for over 20 years, then switched to the university, initially spending 18 months in IT, before I moved to the mailroom.

Dirk Alstein: And before that you’d had nothing to do with the mail at all? Only stuck stamps on your own letters?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: That's right, yes.

Dirk Alstein: So, a bit of a leap into the unknown then?

Cornelia Ribbentrop:Yes.

Dirk Alstein: We always have a briefing before this podcast, I think we can admit that, and you said something along the lines of, “But somebody has to do it.”

Cornelia Ribbentrop:That’s right!

Dirk Alstein: Or: “After all, it has to be done.” But that doesn’t mean that you don’t enjoy it and that you have to drag yourself out of the house on a morning, does it? You’re at home in the post business now?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Of course!

Dirk Alstein: What does a typical working day in the mailroom look like? And here is the antiquated image that immediately springs to my mind when I think of the mail: a big wall with lots of small pigeonholes, into which letters are sorted and the monotonous work of stamping letters. That’s probably a load of rubbish, right? And having to get up early too, I imagine!

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Getting up early, yes, painfully early! Our work begins at 6.30 in the morning. But in return we finish at 3 pm. Which is nice! And of course we do have a big post wall into which the letters are sorted.

Dirk Alstein: Oh!

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes, little letters, big letters. Of course. We get about 300 items every day. Then added to that are the internal letters that we have to sort into the slots too or which are thrown in by the secretaries themselves. Stamps, yes sometimes, but we also have a franking machine for that, which takes over the job of putting stamps on for us. Then there are also around 300 letters that we send out each day and 50 or, at the moment even as many as 100 parcels, that we receive per day, which of course also have to be allocated, which are then collected or delivered, and around 20 parcels that we send out each day too. Plus courier deliveries and the like. So quite a wide array of tasks.

Dirk Alstein: OK. But it is interesting that my image of the wall with the pigeonholes does actually still exist.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Hmm.

Dirk Alstein: But franking machines. OK. That means 300 letters every day, you just said...

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes.

Dirk Alstein: ...is that the maximum? Or an average?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: That is an average.

Dirk Alstein: And I guess that figure fluctuates depending on the season.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes, at the minute we have, for example, around 2,000 letters from the office of the Dean of Studies that we need to put in envelopes and then register, before sending them out at the end of the week. So for something like that there is a bit more work involved. And of course that has to be done alongside everything else. We have peak times where, for example, we might have to send out around 5,000 letters in one day. They are individual days. It doesn’t happen very often, but days like that do exist.

Dirk Alstein: Hmm. And alongside traditional letters and parcels, what else is there? Is there anything else as well? Because I imagine there might be hazardous goods. Do you receive that kind of thing sometimes?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes, of course. The things that we receive run the entire gamut - everything you can think of. (Laughs) Yes. And normal parcels - the word parcels covers an awful lot of things. They can be any kind of completely normal things, but it is also possible that there are courier items, courier consignments or express letters, that is, for example, often the case with offers; that is something else that we do every day. Both outgoing and incoming.

Dirk Alstein: ...so letters, parcels, hazardous goods. Bulky items, things like that?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes.

Dirk Alstein: And oddities too?

Cornelia Ribbentrop:Oddities too, yes. As an example…

Dirk Alstein: Yes please. (Both laugh) So, to tell the truth, we had a chat beforehand, what do I mean, “to tell the truth”?!! Of course we talked before this interview, and there were a few things that you mentioned. Instead of mailroom, you could call it oddities office. The things that turn up there sometimes!

Cornelia Ribbentrop: With most of the parcels, we have no idea what is inside. They are already fastened up, and if they are correctly addressed, we never get to know what they contain. But with some things, we can see, for example, one time a surfboard arrived. That was hard not to know about. We knew exactly that it was a surfboard. Another time we had a walking frame. We were quite annoyed when that one arrived.

Dirk Alstein: Do you know why that had been sent?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Well the surfboard was actually a private parcel.

Dirk Alstein: (Laughs)

Cornelia Ribbentrop: It shouldn’t have been. It’s not actually allowed.

Dirk Alstein: We will come back to that... private mail. And the walking frame?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: The walking frame. Luckily, the secretary from the relevant department came by at almost exactly the same time to say that they had ordered it as a farewell gift for their professor. Otherwise we would actually have had to return it, as we cannot accept any private items. Then another time, admittedly we were told about it in advance, a delivery of underwear. That came to us because it couldn’t be canceled. But, of course, that only happened once and is secondly not allowed.

Dirk Alstein: OK. So in that case you were prewarned. But you don’t have a scanner or anything like they have in the airport?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: No!

Dirk Alstein: You only have a franking machine. (Laughs)

Cornelia Ribbentrop:: Yes. (Laughs)

Dirk Alstein: And if you suspect somehow that an item is a private item - that, after all, isn't allowed - are you allowed to look inside? Or how does it work?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: No. So...

Dirk Alstein: How do things stand with postal confidentiality?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: If, for example, a parcel comes from Zalando.

Dirk Alstein: Ah, that’s right.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: ...and it’s written on the outside in big letters...

Dirk Alstein: Yes.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: ...then we are entitled to say that we will not accept this parcel.

Dirk Alstein: Ah, ok.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: However, if somebody orders something from Amazon and the parcel is properly addressed, we won’t realize. The only time when we notice something like that, is when the address is inadequate, for example, it only says Otto von Guericke University on the label. That happens really often. Then we have to open the parcel, because otherwise we can't allocate it. Then hopefully there will be a delivery note inside that says who ordered it. If that isn’t the case, then we have to inquire with the company that sent it to find out who actually ordered it. It only gets tricky when they say that they won’t tell us. Then what might happen is that the item gets left with us. It doesn’t happen very often, but it isn’t unknown. In the majority of cases it takes two or three days until somebody comes to us and says that they haven't received their parcel.

Dirk Alstein: My underwear!

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Exactly. (laughs loudly)

Dirk Alstein: Where are my briefs? (both laugh) But actually quite a lot of research work goes into it. And it isn’t actually one of our main tasks, but it goes with the territory.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes.

Dirk Alstein: Has it... over the course of time... you have been at the university for five years now, three and a half in the mailroom... Has it changed? I mean, I imagine that the rise of Amazon and the big mail-order firms, that will have made a big difference somehow. Have you noticed that?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes, on average we have 50 parcels that arrive here. And every day there are three or four that really have to be opened because the address is insufficient.

Dirk Alstein: How many people work in the mailroom?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: There are three of us in the mailroom. And the opening of the letters and parcels, yes, letters are affected too, if they are not correctly addressed, is mostly my responsibility.

Dirk Alstein: OK. That means, that the drivers who I often meet, who more or less deliver to me directly in the office, because in the MCM department we often have deliveries, especially in the print area, that are not directly part of your department, instead it is an external service?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: That is an external service that has responsibility for the delivery in the buildings, that are so far away from us.

Dirk Alstein: OK. And (laughs) you have three staff there, including apprentices?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: So I have two colleagues, so there are three of us altogether. At the moment - I think this is really nice - we always have an apprentice with us for a month at a time, so that they can have a bit of a look round with us, get acquainted with how things work, just so that they can see what actually happens, for instance, if they want to send an item abroad. What needs to be done. The difficulty is, a little, that we always have to have all of the documents properly compiled, otherwise there can be delays with the consignment. Yes, because... there are urgent things, but they nevertheless sit around for a day or so because we simply don’t have all of the documents together, because it wasn't arranged in advance. That is a shame.

Dirk Alstein: But the apprentices don’t do their training with you directly...

Cornelia Ribbentrop: No.

Dirk Alstein: ...instead they come to you for, more or less, an internship semester.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Exactly.

Dirk Alstein: They are probably learning to manage an office.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes.

Dirk Alstein: And they come to you so that they understand what happens if they somehow put their unfranked, unaddressed letter or parcel in the outgoing mail?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes, or simply sometimes - it happens over and over again, that the letters are stamped on the right-hand side instead of on the left, yes. The right-hand side is the franking area. And it takes around two days for the apprentices to say, without prompting: “There’s something wrong with this again.” Yippee! That is how we want it to be.

Dirk Alstein: Three staff in the mailroom. It always has to work. It is a department that cannot be easy to run. How do you coordinate it?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes, that simply cannot close under any circumstances. Yes.

Dirk Alstein: Has that ever happened? No?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: So, we have had, I think... during my time here there have been perhaps only two days where we had a temp in. Otherwise, there is always one of us there. Sometimes that is not at all easy.

Dirk Alstein: Because people can always get sick...

Cornelia Ribbentrop: ...exactly, yes, and everybody has to take a holiday some time, even us. Yes, that’s how it is, but we actually manage well. It is just a shame, that some things, for example the annual works outing, yes...

Dirk Alstein: ...that’s just not possible...

Cornelia Ribbentrop: ...we can’t join in with that, because the mailroom has to stay open. First, because, after all, people are always waiting for some document or another, for letters and parcels, and on the other hand, if nobody is there, then the service companies can’t deliver to us either. And then it is questionable whether the parcels will arrive with us the next day in an orderly fashion. Sometimes it’s not all that easy.

Dirk Alstein: That must affect the lunch break too, because there always has to be somebody in the mailroom.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes.

Dirk Alstein: And you have already mentioned that the delivery services are always coming too. The external ones.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes, we actually have a nice sign on the mailroom door saying “lunch break from 12 to 12.30 pm” but we couldn’t actually leave. Because when the delivery people come, we have to accept the parcels. They won’t come back again another time.

Dirk Alstein: Has anything ever been lost because you couldn’t be found? Or...

Cornelia Ribbentrop: No.

Dirk Alstein: ...I’m just remembering something (laughs) that you said in our chat beforehand...

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Did I say something different?

Dirk Alstein: Key word: parcels in the grass.

Cornelia Ribbentrop:: Ah, yes, that was, that wasn’t down to us, it was the delivery people. Can I say it? It was Hermes. (Laughs)

Dirk Alstein: You can say anything here... (laughs)

Cornelia Ribbentrop: (Laughs) I can say anything here. That's nice.

Dirk Alstein: You can say anything you like. (Laughs) We’ll edit it out.

Cornelia Ribbentrop:: I see. Yes, they just turned up. After 3 pm. At least I hope it was after 3 pm, and that it wasn’t when we were still there. In any case, they couldn’t find anybody and left the parcels in the grass and the next morning - luckily, our janitors were on the ball - they collected them all up and brought them to us first in the mailroom so that we could process them. Or a delivery person once just left a parcel in any old building on a corridor somewhere without handing it over to anyone. Luckily, that found its way to us too and we were able to pass it on.

Dirk Alstein: I made a note of another line from our preliminary chat, which was: “It’s bad when somebody gets married.”

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Yes. Really bad! (both laugh loudly)

Dirk Alstein: Newly divorced: I’m familiar with the phrase. But why is it bad for you? I suppose it affects your research.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Exactly, exactly. We rely heavily on the TSR system because we simply cannot commit the name of every employee to memory. So, it’s bad if somebody gets married - in other words bad if they change their name and it isn’t amended in the TSF in a timely manner. It’s just as bad if somebody changes departments or suddenly is in two departments and we have to look and see how to proceed, in other words for whom or for which department it is actually meant. But it’s ok. We manage.

Dirk Alstein: Getting married is a nice thing, after all!

Cornelia Ribbentrop: (Laughs)

Dirk Alstein: Only the thing with the names is a bit awkward, then. We have already mentioned it: there are a few things that people could do to make your job easier. What would they be? Or if you had one wish, what would you like your colleagues here at the university to do?

Cornelia Ribbentrop: What I would like is that we would be asked questions a little more often so that we can arrange things in advance: What do we want to send? How fast does it need to get there? Just ask us: “What do you need from us?” That would make all of our work a bit easier, and the frustration on all sides would be less, if everyone knew in advance that the item cannot be sent without the recipient’s telephone number, for example.

Dirk Alstein: OK. So simply talking to one another more.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: ... yes...

Dirk Alstein: ...by phone, or even ropping by the mailroom.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Exactly. 

Dirk Alstein: That fits in well with the aim of this podcast. Speaking to one another leads to greater understanding and more information. And that almost brings us to the end. We have a final section, Ms Ribbentrop. And it is called “Long story short.” That means, I give you three sentences one after another, that I would like you to complete. Number 1: I like working at the university because...

Cornelia Ribbentrop: I like working at the university because it is so nice and big, there are so many different people, so many nationalities here, and we have and can experience so many great things. It is so varied here.

Dirk Alstein: 2nd question: We could improve the feeling of togetherness at the university by...

Cornelia Ribbentrop: The feeling of togetherness... well, basically, as always: We could improve the feeling of togetherness by talking to one another more.

(brief pause)

Dirk Alstein: Well, that works. Short and to the point.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: (Laughs)

Dirk Alstein: Exactly, that really was...

Cornelia Ribbentrop: (Laughs)

Dirk Alstein: ...a long story short; I was waiting for more!

Cornelia Ribbentrop:You wanted it to be short!

Dirk Alstein: Yes, you’re right!

Cornelia Ribbentrop:(Laughs)

Dirk Alstein: You were only following instructions. 3rd question: In 10 years’ time, my job...

Cornelia Ribbentrop:: In 10 years’ time, my job will definitely still exist. We have made quite a lot of progress with digitization in the mailroom, and there is still more to come, but I do not think that we will be able to dispense completely with manual work. Parcels will still be sent to us and letters will still arrive, which will still have to be properly delivered. And that needs us to do our job.

Dirk Alstein: And that’s it! Thank you very much.

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Thank you!

Dirk Alstein: (Laughs)

Cornelia Ribbentrop: That was great! (Laughs)

Dirk Alstein: Let’s do it again some time! Thank you too for listening out there. And here’s a quick reminder: if you have any questions, suggestions, feedback, which, incidentally, will be treated in confidence, just send us an email to

Until the next time! Thank you very much! Bye!

Cornelia Ribbentrop: Bye!

Intro voiceover: In die Uni reingehört. Der Podcast zur Arbeitswelt an der OVGU.