As of: February 17, 2024, 9:09 a.m
By: Kathrin Böhmer
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She loves her bike and also the job: Manja Soir has been a delivery person for 30 years and mainly travels the Puchheimer Flur.
Every now and then she also has to step in for sick colleagues.
© Weber
The post office in Gröbenzell, which is also responsible for Eichenau and Puchheim, has had hard times.
During the Christmas business, the staff shortage caused the worst failures ever.
There was a hail of complaints.
The situation has calmed down.
But delivery people are urgently needed.
It means: promoting a wonderful profession – with lots of fresh air.
Gröbenzell – Delivery driver Manja Soir could easily be imagined in a Deutsche Post commercial.
The blonde woman sits relaxed on the saddle of her yellow e-bike, which is loaded with boxes with letters sticking out on edge.
She's pedaling, she's just crossing Lochhauser Straße in Puchheim.
She is smiling, her blue eyes shining beneath her colorful wool hat.
The sky is blue and the sun is already giving its best for February.
Perfect idyll.
All that's actually missing is for the 47-year-old to call out to someone: “Good morning, Ms. Müller, I have your mail.
Please greet your husband.”
Postman is more than just throwing out letters
That doesn't happen though.
But Manja Soir knows how to tell beautiful stories.
She recently received a letter herself.
In it, an older gentleman thanked the delivery person for always running up the stairs to deliver the mail.
Because he is no longer able to do it himself.
“That feels good,” says Manja Soir.
She knows that for some people the postman is more than just a mail carrier.
“Some people are happy when they can chat with someone for a moment.” Some people know their postman or postman by name.
That's just part of the job, even in the most difficult times with serious staff shortages.
After 20 minutes at the first mailbox
Today the woman from Olching is poaching outside her territory, so to speak, she is filling in for a colleague.
It goes to Eichenau, one of the further routes from the Gröbenzell base, next to Puchheim-Ort.
Unlike many of her colleagues, Soir doesn't have a trike.
She prefers her two-wheeler, which travels at a top speed of 15 kilometers per hour.
After about 20 minutes, the delivery person arrives at the first mailbox on Auenstrasse.
And it is precisely here, in a path with terraced houses, that the advantage of her narrower bike becomes apparent: she can cycle right up to the mailbox.
“It’s just more agile.
I love my bike.”
Job advertisement via direct mail
Flexibility is currently very popular.
Colleagues are repeatedly absent due to illness and there is also a lack of young talent.
The postal service took the initiative.
In addition to the yellow box of letters, Soir has a box full of glossy pieces of paper.
It's a direct mail: “Delivery urgently wanted”.
Anyone who hasn't put up the "No Advertising" sign will receive it.
Maybe there will be a new colleague there.
In total there are 33 delivery people in Gröbenzell who share 24 districts - by car and bicycle.
And the delivery people actually have their home districts where they know their way around very well.
Soirs is in Puchheim.
But: “You should be able to find your way around several districts.” Because you have to step in every now and then.
She is also very familiar with the route to Eichenau and has driven it before.
If you know the route well, you'll travel faster.
The plans for how to best cover which area are not drawn up outside in the fresh air, but in the office.
The head of the Gröbenzell branch is Stephan Eisenkolb, whose cheeks are not quite as rosy.
He's had tough times.
“Christmas was the worst ever,” he says.
Around the holidays the work is doubled with packages and cards for dear relatives.
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At the same time, there were a lot of absences due to illness, and then there was the backlog caused by the snow chaos on the first weekend in December, when nothing worked.
Very difficult combination.
Many letters only arrived after the holidays.
Eichenau is not the stepchild
Were there many complaints?
Eisenkolb just waves meaningfully.
The Tagblatt also received one or two emails, remarkably often from Eichenau.
Is it because the delivery people have had to cycle from Gröbenzell to the Starzelbach community in all weathers for several years?
No, that has nothing to do with that, it's a coincidence, assures a Post spokeswoman.
The bottom line is that the routes are balanced.
Everyone works their own route.
The day begins with sorting
At Manja Soir the day starts at 7 a.m.
In the morning, the mail arrives sorted (or not) by truck from the letter center in the building on Olchinger Straße.
Currently from Schorn (Starnberg district), at some point from Germering.
The delivery people sort everything into their “lockers”.
They look like the shelves you know from the teachers' room at school.
Labels stick on it.
The “Pfefferminzstrasse” in Eichenau, for example, has its own section.
After 20 minutes she is at the first mailbox.
© Weber
Soir arranges everything so she can put it on her bike.
Anything that doesn't have space there is brought by car and placed in the storage boxes on the streets.
So Soir doesn't have to keep going back to Gröbenzell.
She spends the day on the saddle.
She keeps her snack in a bag at the back, where the rainproof clothing is packed.
Sometimes she also stops at the bakery.
Closing time is around 3:30 p.m.
E-bike noise scares dogs away
And yes: Soir could act as an advertising ambassador for the post office.
She learned the profession from scratch, 30 years ago in Dresden.
“One box on the bike was enough,” remembers the 47-year-old.
Now the letters are becoming fewer and fewer (see below), but there are more packages.
She raves about how the postal service gave her great support when she had her children and returned to work.
And: “I can save myself the gym.” The best thing about the job: lots of fresh air and exercise.
And she immediately dispels a cliché: “I have no problems with dogs at all, at least since we started riding the e-bikes.” How does that relate?
Quite simply: the four-legged friends don't like the noise of the whirring engine.
Or maybe they just think the postwoman is too nice to bite.
Volume is falling: one million letters fewer than the year before
How has the volume of letters developed in recent years?
The Post provides answers for the Tagblatt.
“Basically it can be said that there will always be letters,” as it is said.
But they have been decreasing for years.
The structural change has already accelerated again in 2023, with the volume of letters having shrunk by five to six percent.
Even more so for private letters.
Private individuals and more and more companies are increasingly going digital.
In numbers it looks like this: The post office across Germany currently has around 48 million letters per working day.
There are currently 6.2 million parcels per day.
The year before, there were around 49 million letters per working day (parcels 6.7 million) across Germany.
The year before there were 55 million letters per working day (and 5.2 million parcels).
even
You can find even more current news from the Fürstenfeldbruck district at Merkur.de/Fürstenfeldbruck.