How the US Postal Service reads terrible handwriting

That 1.2 billion images stat seemed unbelievable, but it makes sense when you break down the numbers: it works out to an average of 38 images per second, which is about right for the number of staff there!

Imagine doing a Captcha every 4 seconds for a living. Mad respect, I would go crazy.

About 40 years ago, I wanted to send a letter to a girl in America because she appeared in our Dutch newspaper for having saved a swan that was shot with an arrow. All I had was her first name, the name of her town and the picture from the newspaper, being an optimistic kid, I just glued the photo on the envelope, added her name and town, and to my amazement the letter got delivered: A few weeks later I received a thank-you note in return. Kudos to the US postal service.

It makes sense now. Eliminating cursive writing from schools was just part of the U.S. Postal Service’s business strategy.

I once carried mail in the rain, and pocketed a letter from a customer. The rain made it into my jacket during a hard pour and when I unloaded it at the station, I saw it was smudged. I asked the supervisor what I should do and he said “It still has a return address, let Salt Lake have a go at it”. I heard back that the customer got it through. The REC is amazing.

This is a rare job that is both of these things: 1. It gets harder every day. 2. It becomes less necessary every day.

Only slightly-irrelevant, but I’m continually amused by the oft-repeated observation that the American “Post Office” delivers the mail, while the British “Royal Mail” delivers the post.

Oh, wow. I worked at the Salt Lake REC for several years. Whenever this place comes up in the news, it's described as the place where bad handwriting is deciphered. But in my time there, I spent more time looking at printed addresses that for some reason couldn't be read by the automated systems than looking at handwritten addresses. Also, once you learn the rules, applying them becomes automatic and extremely fast. It's a fun job for the right person.

I worked at this exact REC from 2008-2009 as someone who did what Tom is learning here. You're expected to type at a MINIMUM of 7000 characters per hour (Ah, the specified 7150 later in the video), which can be very difficult to do because that only give you AT MOST about 2-3 seconds per piece of mail (they say ~4 seconds later, but you, as the keyer, choose the speed; you just get in trouble if you go past that 4s mark too much, because the scanners physically can't scan the next piece of mail until you finish the piece you're on). The training that Tom goes through lasts... a week or two? I can't remember exactly, but then you're sent out on the live floor and have three months of probation to hit that 7000 mark. If you don't meet that minimum, you're just let go when probation ends because, quite honestly, you are nothing more than a seat warmer there. I developed major tendonitis from working here, but they refused to pay workers comp unless I got a $4000 procedure done to prove that it was due to working there that caused it. And they wouldn't pay that $4000 if they saw any evidence that it could have been caused by something outside of my work. Not that outside factors DID cause it, but that outside factors COULD HAVE caused it. So I opted to go to college instead since that was almost a full years worth of tuition at a state university. Fun fact, mail from the Seattle, WA mail processing center was the clearest and easiest to read. I think they actually cleaned the camera on occasion; centers back east, particularly Worcester, MA, would have giant smears of ink on every single image that prevented reading any mail whatsoever, and they'd never do anything to try and clear up the camera. Also, it's not all handwritten mail that we'd see: very clear, printed addresses still couldn't be read sometimes, and only part of that was due to the address not being in that database of known addressed mentioned at the beginning of the video. Another fun fact: until recently, almost all addresses in Utah (or at least in the most populous county [Salt Lake County]), are a grid of N, E, S, W, so an address would be, like, 1350 W. 15600 S., and this stupid addressing encoding system wasn't designed for that, so the house number in this example is "1350", and the address portion is "W. 15600 S.". The 3+1 rude didn't really work well at all here, which was infuriating working at the SLC REC. Since almost everyone here writes the cardinal abbreviation, IIRC you'd do "W_ _S", and then have to pick from a list of ALL addresses that have the same house number and directions, but find the correct second number, of which there could be many. It's a stupid, rigid system, imho.

I like how from an outside perspective this seems like the less advanced side of mail management when 99% of it is done with literal walls of computers, but from an internal view the humans here are the most advanced handwriting interpreting systems available that the computers have to fall back on.

I can't believe that every time a doctor writes a letter it goes through this processing facility. Fascinating!

I am an archivist and therefore, reading handwriting is one the key skills required for the job. However, I bow down in awe in regards to the speed at which those people are parsing the adresses. I could never achieve that. I am happy to have the luxury of taking as much time as I need for a proper transcription. Also, I should point out that I work in Germany and the old German cursive is both a joy to read and an infuriating experience at some times. Trying to transcribe stuff from the 19th century is still easier than medieval writing by many orders of magnitude.

I work here and the speed is actually easier than you think. Those examples were so legible! My favorite is cursive and backwards letters/numbers on top of bad hand writing. Now that’s hard. XD

I love that this guy genuinely likes his job. He seems very happy to tell everyone how it works. So refreshing!

I will be hand writing my mail as bad as possible to keep these people in a job.

Why am I watching a video about the REC? This is literally the best job I've ever had. I miss that job so much. Great bosses, nobody breathing down your neck, listening to music or podcasts your entire shift... If my health hadn't taken a long jump off a short pier, I'd still be there.

Top tip from an ex-postie in the UK: Don't use red envelopes, but if you do, always write the address on a white sticker or label and attach that. The lasers that read the address can't pick up the writing so well with a red background. They have a similar problem with metallic envelopes, so the sticker rule applies here, too. If they can't be read by machine, they have to be hand sorted, and this potentially adds days to the delivery time. We would get lorry loads at Christmas and Valentine's, and we were just an average sized town. Also, always put a return address, even if it is just your house number and postcode. That simple act could save your item from being permanently lost if the delivery address is damaged/defaced/missing.

I did this as a temp job for the Christmas season like 15 years ago. For an anti-social computer nerd it was almost a dream job, pop on some headphones and just mash buttons for 8 hours. At the time the money wasn't bad either, somewhere in the $14/hour range as a transitional employee (temp). I got offered a full time spot a couple months after the season ended but turned it down, which ended up being a good move as they closed the facility just before the next holiday season. As mind numbing as it looks, eventually your brain just keys in on the specific spots you need to check and you button mash your way through it in a blur. The days actually flew by most of the time.

I can only imagine just how soul draining this job might be. Whenever you're not on break, you're on constant vigilance and work to keep up a tight pace.

I’ve worked in this very building for most of my 18 year career. It’s definitely not for everyone, but I love this crazy organization! This video is the best one I have seen yet. You are a lot of fun to watch and Ryan does such a great job of explaining how the technology works. He’s a computer nerd to his core. 😊 Really great video!