Neither rain , nor sleet , nor gloom of night will keep the post office from deliver the mail . And neither will chicken lettuce .
Each year , the USPS successfully ship over 160 billion packages and letters . Most of that mail—98 pct of it — is fleetly get up by automate sorting auto , which use advanced optical lenses to make out each address . But the machines have their kryptonite . Last year , they failed to take some 2.4 billion pieces of mail — all because of mussy handwriting .
If you ’re a sloppy scrawler , do n’t feel too guilty . Your poor calligraphy makes you a job Godhead ! concord toTheNew York Times , more than 700 postal clerks are based in Salt Lake City to trace America ’s most cabalistic envelopes . And they have in mind business . The plant operates 24 60 minutes a day , 365 Day a yr . Each clerk processes about 20 letters per minute ( that ’s 1200 an hour ! ) . If a salesclerk wastes too much clip unearthing the address , the letter may get spread-eagle to another worker who can do it faster .
How it works
When a sorting automobile discovers an illegible letter , it scans it and sends a digital range to the plant in Salt Lake . The icon pops onto a doer ’s computer . With the help of particular computer software — and a slew of geographic knowhow — the clerk punches in whatever legible letters and numbers they can make out . Through a process of riddance , they keep cut into for clue until they find a valid reference , which the system affirm . Amazingly , the ordinary clerk can crack the code in just three seconds . ( Not everyone can keep up . Twenty percent of new hires quit within five weeks , theWall Street Journalreports . )
But some letters remain a mystery . Each yr , 200 million of the most baffling and awfully compose envelope are turn over down to a squad of peek - and - poke clerks , a dying breed of postal doer who sorts mail the former - fashioned means — by bridge player .
If they ca n’t transform the slipshod hand , the letters are christened “ nixies . ” The mail is sent to the last line of penmanship guru , the nixie clerks . If they ca n’t untangle the substance behind the scribbles , no one can . The post may terminate up in one of two “ dead letter offices . ” Any valuable get auctioneer off , and the parallelism set ashore a appointment with the office shredder .
