The U.S.P.S. Remote Encoding Center

“The machines can’t read it, so we have to. It does get easier after you’ve been doing it for a while. You start to recognize certain things.” -Natalie Jenkins, postal worker who helps decipher letters at the Remote Encoding Center

The U.S.P.S. has long been a pioneer in the field of optimal character recognition AKA OCR. They've got vast rooms of machinery that scan your mail and route it to the appropriate other rooms of machinery until it gets sorted (probably by more machines) and then your postal carrier gets their bundle to bring out to you. Those machines are really good at what they do- 98% good, in fact, according to the New York Times. 

When the machine fails, that's where the Remote Encoding Center gets to work. There used to be more of these centers, but as the technology has improved, the U.S.P.S. has closed all but one. Located in Salt Lake City, the 700 workers spend an average of three seconds looking at all the illegible and faded or otherwise confusing addresses. They process 5 million pieces of mail DAILY. 

And people balk at the price of stamps. All that work and all those jobs working for your mail for 49 cents. It is a wonder, I tell you.

 

 

P.S. The image is not one that needed any help being delivered, but all of the photos I found of the REC were boooooooring or not under CC license.

Comments

[Alan B]

The only good thing to say about bad handwriting — it keeps people in a job by preventing full automation.

[Juana]

I always enjoy your"behind the scenes" posts of what it takes to get mail from the sender to the receiver.

[mandy]

Love this post! And the fact that I live just outside of Salt Lake City makes me want to get a job there!