How does the USPS do that?

[gittyup]

On the news, I have seen different stories where they show the behind the scenes of the USPS processing all our letters. I see these letters flying down long sorting belts. Some letters are being pushed down different chutes, which I would assume is based on zip code. At any rate, are the scanners reading our hand written zip codes. If so, I think that is pretty cool. I mean some people write pretty crappy. Does anyone here work or have worked for the USPS?

 

[The Stigenator]

I wondered too the last time I was at the post office. I was mailing something out, but it looked to me he swiped the package under a scanner. Ofcourse he could have manually entered the zipcode too.. But seriously it would be awesome to know if they have a way of reading the label.

As for the chutes thing, have you noticed a mark on the bottom of your mail, set of vertical lines.. well the reader reads those in sorting and routing.

 

[Emulex]

yeah they OCR your writing to automate much of the letter tasks!!

thats why they say

Always put the name and any comments before the street address, use a large ARIAL
font. Fixed type if possible.

ie to:

Joe Blow
c/o vid card auction
123 Easy St.
Whereever, St. 30033-3333


Never ever put junk below the city state, it causes the computers to reject the automated sorting, and gets handed over to monkeys for slower processing.

 

[kranky]

I have a friend who used to work there.

On the addresses that can be read by OCR and do not already have a bar code, the machine sprays a bar code on the bottom and it's routed automatically after that.

On the ones the machine can't read, a picture of the envelope or parcel is displayed on a monitor at a remote site where a human punches in the ZIP code, and that's the bar code which is applied. So if a person mistypes one, the letter can get incorrectly routed.

They were expected to do 20 keyins per minute. The reason they remotely display the addresses is that they use contract help for this purpose and that way the non-USPS people don't have physical access to the mail. She worked at a site about 15 miles from the actual post office that had the letters she was sorting.

 

[purplehayes]

Darn you Kranky!!! :| That was going to be my little tidbit of trivia!! I've been cheated, too slow on the draw.

PH