You don’t see a whole lot of letters anymore," and those they do are "pretty hard to read. – Dan McCoy
SALT LAKE CITY — The number of envelopes addressed by hand and sent through the mail system triple in December.
And in the age of email and texting, plain, old-fashioned penmanship seems to be getting illegible.
That’s where the workers at the U.S. Postal Service Remote Encoding Center come in. They are the nation’s last resort for unreadable mail, processing more than 5 million pieces of mail every day.
“You don’t see a whole lot of letters anymore," and those they do are "pretty hard to read," said Dan McCoy, one of a thousand workers at the center, 1275 S. 4800 West, tasked with figuring out where indecipherable mail and poorly addressed packages are supposed to go.
“It can be a challenge, but you kind of get used to it,” postal service employee Leslie Urry said.
Urry and other data conversion operators don't see the actual envelops, just an image taken by a robot that couldn't read them at a processing facility somewhere in the U.S. They decipher it and type in computer codes that send it to a letter-carrier somewhere.
But poor handwriting isn't the biggest problem.
“I think the biggest challenge is when parts of the address are missing,” McCoy said.
"Sometimes they're just addressed to 'grandma,' things like that," said employee Debra Napier.
This time of year, a lot of them just say "Santa." Those are sent to an actual town, North Pole, Alaska.
"I love Santa mail because it brings back the whole spirit of Christmas, you know, and it's written in this real cute kid handwriting," said employee Erin Nielsen.
The job used to be done at 55 centers. Now Salt Lake City is one of two facilities doing this type of work. The other is in Wichita, Kan. About a year from now, Salt Lake City will become the only place in the nation where they do this job.
"Our volume will double, and we will be hiring enough employees to do that doubling of the volume,” center manager Karen Heath said.
The center is hiring to fill 200 to 300 permanent new jobs starting at more than $14 an hour. To be considered for the job, applicants must type at least 32 words per minute and be able to process one poorly written envelope about every four seconds.
"It's very mindless, actually, once you get the hang of it," Nielsen said.
Employees are also allowed to listen to whatever they want to help them get through the day.
"Actually, when I listen to really good things like 'The Hunger Games' or something, I type better because my adrenaline's going," Nielsen said.
Despite bad handwriting and incomplete addresses, U.S. Postal Service officials said all but a tiny fraction of the mail gets to the right place.
Email: hollenhorst@deseretnews.com