In early 2019 I started working for Otago university, in their mail room. This was the universities' mail delivery service across campus, with rates to rival the public post office, and had special deals for students. I would catch a bus from Abbotsford very early in the morning to start work at 8am. Usually on the bus too and from work I would read one of my brothers short stories. If everything ran smoothly, New Zealand Post would arrive with their deliveries for the university before I started work. Often times it was bang on when I walked through the door. There would be deliveries for students and teachers alike which would need sorting through before 9am. All these parcels would be pigeonholed into their respective areas, and from there would be sorted into bags and boxes for our internal delivery starting at 9am.
The team would drive the delivery van in weekly rotation and would drive all around North Dunedin for the entire morning, dropping off mail to different buildings. The campus isn't housed in just one site, this university is mainly dotted around in different buildings across the northern side of the city. Deliveries would include the hospital, dental school, all the halls of residences, and the library. After lunch there would be a second delivery for the hospital, dental school and library which would take an hour. For the majority of my time working in this role, I was either the designated van driver or van assistant. I found driving the van a daunting task at first, but it didn't take long before I started enjoying it. The afternoon session would be fairly quite, and I would help with creating spreadsheets for auditing. The real downside to this job was the radio. It was on all day. Including in the van if I wasn't driving. If I was driving I would make a point of either not having the radio on at all, or simply listening to Radio Hauraki which played Indie or rock music. But the others listened to radio stations that played really crap 80s cheese music. During my time there I reckon these stations only had a playlist of 300 songs. Now I was forced to listen to this garbage for 8 hours every day for months. What's worse is that the buses always had the radio on too. I would go mildly insane at it, and as the weeks went on I decided to wear ear plugs too and from work to shut it out. The good things about the job was the deliveries and the sunshine. Afternoon deliveries were always just me in the van. There was a few weeks where I used this time listening to the new Bis album.
We were only a small team of 3. I got on with everyone and things were far more relaxing than working at the DCC.
I started working in this role in early 2019 until May
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