![]() With just under 1,700 employees, the Center employees tackle all of the United State's illegible addresses in 33 different shifts that operate 24/7. And, according to Heath, they have a high success rate. On a normal day, about 5 million pieces of mail are funneled through this branch, but as it creeps closer to December the number can be as high as 11 million, says Heath. Postal Service has a massive 78,000-square-foot branch, tucked away in the Utah capital, that deciphers illegible addresses. ![]() "It's the handwriting, like your grandmother's, so unique that the computer has a hard time deciphering it," says Heath, manager at the center. That's where Karen Heath and her staff at the Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City step in. Bad handwriting, water damage, archaic fonts and those plastic windows on letters all cause trouble for the computers. ![]() What with so much mail zipping around the country, odds are some of it will never reach its final destination (fingers crossed that'll include Aunt Gale's ugly Christmas sweater). That's because the service uses computers to route the mail, and about two percent of the time (about 40 million pieces of Christmastime mail), the address on a package is illegible. ![]() But while Santa has magic on his side, the USPS must rely on technology to make its deliveries. The service expects to distribute about 15.5 billion pieces of mail during the 2015 holiday season, which is more than 2 times the number of people on Earth. Christmas is the busiest time of year for both Santa and the United States Postal Service. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |