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So I kind of took a hiatus for awhile there. I moved 1500 miles and found the process of getting a job in a new place to be very frustrating. I got a bit depressed and anti-social, but everything is good now. Aside from the whole being unemployed thing, I'm really enjoying living in a place that actually has normal weather cycles and actual scenery (OMG mountains 
). And after the extremely slow hiring process that took almost 2 months, I finally have a job again! Sadly, I don't think I'll be able to share any stories due to the nature of my job. I'm now do data entry for the Post Office, which I don't think will leave much room for discussion. Aside from like, atrocious handwriting and the alarming number of people who have no clue how to properly address an envelope. Basically, post offices put all the mail into machines that sort and scan envelopes and address labels. The scanners read the addresses and print those little barcodes on the mail, which they use for faster sorting to the right delivery offices for faster and earlier mail service. If the computer can't read an address for whatever reason, it sends the image to one of the encoding centers (of which I am working at the only one that will still be operating in the US within the next 6 months, the other location is closing sometime next year). Data conversion operators (like me) see the image on their screens and key in whatever information the system needs in order to route it to the proper location. So of course, I get all the mail that's been mangled or written in unreadable glitter pen or has no useable address information (seriously, some people address things with a person's name, an intersection close to where they live, and a city with no ZIP code).
I have learned some interesting things about the postal service and how the mail works. Basically, if you want something to reach its destination, write legibly in black ink. I'm in my second week of training but am now keying actual mail instead of samples from the 20 year old training system (USPS receives no Federal funding, so they aren't very state-of-the-art). And this is December, which means I've already seen a ton of Christmas cards. The scanners that send us the images are probably ancient. We only get low-res black and white images. And they can only handle a small file size, so larger address labels simply stop scanning at a certain point and we have to tell the system to rescan them. They also hate glitter, colored ink, pencil, and mail where someone thought it would be cute to draw stuff all over it. And if the system can't read it and I can't read it, it gets rejected, where either the local post office will try to decipher it or it will wind up getting returned to sender (which is a separate system I also do). Also, apparently a lot of people like to print the address on their envelopes with printing software, and their favorite appears to be this font that basically creates an "etched" look. It looks like shading that has the address in white like it's been etched out. Seriously, don't use this. At all. It probably looks pretty, but for our system it sucks and it's totally unreadable and I've had to reject several of them because of that. So yeah, I've had a ton of Christmas cards that the system flagged as return to sender (from the same person) and it sucks because they'll have to re-send readable versions of the envelopes.
Speaking of Christmas mail, my icy heart melts every time I get a letter from a child addressed to "Santa Claus, North Pole." The postal service actually has a ZIP code we are to use for "Santa mail," so they actually do go somewhere and it's freaking adorable.
I am also stunned at how many businesses I wind up keying "return to sender" information because they either have terrible printers or because they seem to have no idea how to put mail in an envelope so that the recipient's address is in the little window in the front. Especially really important things like, say, employee paychecks. Ditto for courts sending out notices for court dates and jury duty (seriously, I had over 2 dozen jury duty notices get returned to the same courthouse because the addresses were completely illegible).
I am equally stunned at how many post office employees put mail in the machines backwards, upside-down, or overlapping another piece of mail (seriously, they could take an extra 2 seconds to do it right). Because those have to be instantly flagged as misfed, and they'll be put in a bin to be re-fed into the machines the proper way. Yeah, even if I can read an address, if it's upside-down I am not allowed to key it in (except for the return to sender program, which actually allows me to rotate the image).
Like I said, I won't really have any more "stories" to share of the sucky variety, but after 15 years of working places where it was basically my job to be screamed at and abused, a nice, quiet office job is a lovely change of pace. But I can probably rant about common errors in mailing things and share obscure things about how the mail works here in Off Topic
). And after the extremely slow hiring process that took almost 2 months, I finally have a job again! Sadly, I don't think I'll be able to share any stories due to the nature of my job. I'm now do data entry for the Post Office, which I don't think will leave much room for discussion. Aside from like, atrocious handwriting and the alarming number of people who have no clue how to properly address an envelope. Basically, post offices put all the mail into machines that sort and scan envelopes and address labels. The scanners read the addresses and print those little barcodes on the mail, which they use for faster sorting to the right delivery offices for faster and earlier mail service. If the computer can't read an address for whatever reason, it sends the image to one of the encoding centers (of which I am working at the only one that will still be operating in the US within the next 6 months, the other location is closing sometime next year). Data conversion operators (like me) see the image on their screens and key in whatever information the system needs in order to route it to the proper location. So of course, I get all the mail that's been mangled or written in unreadable glitter pen or has no useable address information (seriously, some people address things with a person's name, an intersection close to where they live, and a city with no ZIP code).I have learned some interesting things about the postal service and how the mail works. Basically, if you want something to reach its destination, write legibly in black ink. I'm in my second week of training but am now keying actual mail instead of samples from the 20 year old training system (USPS receives no Federal funding, so they aren't very state-of-the-art). And this is December, which means I've already seen a ton of Christmas cards. The scanners that send us the images are probably ancient. We only get low-res black and white images. And they can only handle a small file size, so larger address labels simply stop scanning at a certain point and we have to tell the system to rescan them. They also hate glitter, colored ink, pencil, and mail where someone thought it would be cute to draw stuff all over it. And if the system can't read it and I can't read it, it gets rejected, where either the local post office will try to decipher it or it will wind up getting returned to sender (which is a separate system I also do). Also, apparently a lot of people like to print the address on their envelopes with printing software, and their favorite appears to be this font that basically creates an "etched" look. It looks like shading that has the address in white like it's been etched out. Seriously, don't use this. At all. It probably looks pretty, but for our system it sucks and it's totally unreadable and I've had to reject several of them because of that. So yeah, I've had a ton of Christmas cards that the system flagged as return to sender (from the same person) and it sucks because they'll have to re-send readable versions of the envelopes.
Speaking of Christmas mail, my icy heart melts every time I get a letter from a child addressed to "Santa Claus, North Pole." The postal service actually has a ZIP code we are to use for "Santa mail," so they actually do go somewhere and it's freaking adorable.
I am also stunned at how many businesses I wind up keying "return to sender" information because they either have terrible printers or because they seem to have no idea how to put mail in an envelope so that the recipient's address is in the little window in the front. Especially really important things like, say, employee paychecks. Ditto for courts sending out notices for court dates and jury duty (seriously, I had over 2 dozen jury duty notices get returned to the same courthouse because the addresses were completely illegible).
I am equally stunned at how many post office employees put mail in the machines backwards, upside-down, or overlapping another piece of mail (seriously, they could take an extra 2 seconds to do it right). Because those have to be instantly flagged as misfed, and they'll be put in a bin to be re-fed into the machines the proper way. Yeah, even if I can read an address, if it's upside-down I am not allowed to key it in (except for the return to sender program, which actually allows me to rotate the image).
Like I said, I won't really have any more "stories" to share of the sucky variety, but after 15 years of working places where it was basically my job to be screamed at and abused, a nice, quiet office job is a lovely change of pace. But I can probably rant about common errors in mailing things and share obscure things about how the mail works here in Off Topic
As for 
Although, I was eight.
and horribly misspelled city names, wrong state abbreviations, etc. And it's amazing how few people use the 
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