Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by Muzza on Saturday May 04, 2013 @05:45AM (#5654584)

I used to do this when I worked for the post office (not in the US) and it was by far the dullest thing I have ever done. Truly loathsome work. It was referred to as "coding".

There were rules in place so you could only do it for 20 minutes at a stretch and only a couple of times (three?) per shift. Presumably this had to do with the fact that the quality - which was a problem - would collapse otherwise. You needed to keep a low average time per letter or you would get booted off coding duties. I can't remember exactly how long, but you needed to be able to code a letter in a matter of seconds.

The American setup looks a lot more hardcore (six screens?!) than the one I used though. Pretty sure the application was written in Visual Basic.

The machines which sort mail are pretty bad-ass. Not only can they sort by postcode, but also by address so the mail comes out in the order in which the mailman visits each building on his route.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by meric on Saturday May 04, 2013 @06:44AM (#5654664)

"The machines which sort mail are pretty bad-ass. Not only can they sort by postcode, but also by address so the mail comes out in the order in which the mailman visits each building on his route."

Now, that, is technology.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by calebegg on Saturday May 04, 2013 @05:31PM (#5656383)

If you enter your address on the USPS website, you can even look up the sequence number used:

https://www.usps.com/zip4/

After you enter an address, it's under "Mailing Industry Details", shown as "eLOT" (not sure what it stands for)

https://ribbs.usps.gov/index.cfm?page=elot

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by mh- on Saturday May 04, 2013 @09:20PM (#5657044)

eLOT = Enhanced Line of Travel

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by gcheong on Saturday May 04, 2013 @11:15AM (#5655144)

And still I get my neighbor's mail.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by gngeal on Saturday May 04, 2013 @01:31PM (#5655580)

That's because programmers still write code with off-by-one errors!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by Retric on Saturday May 04, 2013 @02:12PM (#5655733)

Thanks for that. Mostly I look at HN jokes as a waste of space, but that was just perfect.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by ars on Sunday May 05, 2013 @02:45AM (#5657644)

That happens when one of your neighbors either got no mail that day, or had their mail held.

The mailman gives the next stack to each house in turn, and apparently didn't notice the address was off.

In my case it always happened when it wasn't my regular mailman.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by ExpiredLink on Saturday May 04, 2013 @12:08PM (#5655296)

Overhead monitors - looking at the pictures you can feel the pain in neck and shoulders.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses by keithpeter on Sunday May 05, 2013 @06:49AM (#5658043)

Yes. The local bus control station has displays with two rows of three monitors showing bus positions on large maps. They have them set up so operator's eye line is about middle of the two rows. They are just looking at the red dots for buses on a large set of maps though...

[ Parent | on HN ]