Salt Lake City – Neither the snow, the rain, the heat nor the gloom of the night can stop the mail. But bad calligraphy? This is a challenge.
When an address is not readable, mail distribution centers across the country capture images of addresses that are difficult to read and send them electronically to the remote coding center of the American postal service, or REC, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
“These are about three million letters that go through our machines every day,” CBS News Steve Hilton, USPS main director at the UTA Lake City distribution center.
On average, Hilton says that around 75,000 of these three million letters must be re -examined by the center because their addresses are too difficult to decipher before being sent to REC.
“Just last year, we treated about a billion letters in the center alone,” said Ryan Bullock, Director of REC operations.
Bullock oversees hundreds of chicken scratch experts, known as data conversion operators or Keyers. They operate 24 hours a day every day of the year. They are not even closed for the holidays.
“Every hour, someone will make around 900 pieces on average,” said Bullock.
One of these Keyers is Amy Heugly, who has been deciphering addresses for over 20 years, examining images of letters to quickly determine their destinations. She jokes saying that it improved her to read her doctor’s writing.
If a Keyer cannot decode the address of the image, the USPS has only one option: a practical inspection.
“Someone from the factory will have to receive this mail physically and watch it,” said Bullock.
This requires a postal worker to manually examine the address as a last attempt to read his planned destination.
Everything in the hope that he will not be returned to the sender, an unknown address.
