How the U.S. postal service delivers mail with "illegible" addresses
Have Bad Handwriting? The U.S. Postal Service Has Your Back http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/have-bad-handwriting-us-postal-service-has-your-back-180957629/?no-ist That's where Karen Heath and her staff at the Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City step in. "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. The U.S. Postal Service has a massive 78,000-square-foot branch, tucked away in the Utah capital, that deciphers illegible addresses. 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. 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. - - - --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone. _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
