How the US Postal Service reads terrible handwriting

At the Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City, keyers process 1.2 billion images of mail every year. It's a more difficult job than I thought.
Edited by Michelle Martin: / mrsmmartin
Thanks to Zack from JerryRigEverything for being the camera op: / jerryrigeverything
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[@TomScottGo]

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!

[@pancakesyrup8092]

Damn dats crazy

[@JustOasisYT]

wow

[@che9y]

Yummy

[@flexyProductions.]

12 days ago?

[@PetraJohan]

Nice

[@tylerdean3489]

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

[@j_m_b_1914]

I remember when I played Tetris for hours on end I would stop and have the weirdest thoughts while looking at things and how my brain would try to force them together. Imagine what these people must dream about.

[@SilverFlame819]

You just run on auto-pilot while listening to podcasts and stuff. It's so simple. I loved that job!!

[@leftylou6070]

I can picture the mointor flying across the room.

[@AwesometownUSA]

@@SilverFlame819 I worked at one that processed federal forms. Once the iPhone came out and you could store info/data on your media device, there was no more listening at work. Just the soul-crunching sound of keyboards clicking 8+ hours/day. I quickly went insane and had to find a new job haha

[@dislikebutton1799]

I'd go postal!

[@BW-81]

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

[@king077]

​@@teamgeist3328in American public schools no, I haven't heard about anyone learning cursive in at least 15 years

[@heliogen5959]

@@king077I learned it roughly 8-9 years ago.

[@asdfssdfghgdfy5940]

@@teamgeist3328tbh it seems kind of unnecessary to learn these days, except for maybe a little bit in primary school just so you know how it works. These days the only writing you usually have to do is block letters on a form. And my carpal tunnel is extremely thankful for that.

[@savannahmapping2340]

​@@heliogen5959learned it 5 years ago

[@miketheant1107]

​@@king077y tho 😭

[@farrahupson]

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.

[@j_m_b_1914]

If they were smart, they'd take a sample from REC and go back to the OCR setup and determine why it wasn't read properly. Either an OCR issue, package picture issue or something else going on. If most of the labels you fixed were printed, there is something very wrong with the OCR system.

@@j_m_b_1914 it was said in the video that they use the human input to improve the OCR.

[@j_m_b_1914]

@ Apparently I need to improve my listening comprehension. Thanks!

[@Utonian21]

I live in Utah and I had no idea that place here!

[@cursedGalataea]

My guess is, people started taping down or taping over top of the printed addresses, rather than glueing them, or the tape changed quality and was so reflective the scanners couldn't read them. I spend half my day fighting with taped over barcodes and scanners at the PO.

[@PocketBeemRocket]

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.

[@Pudji.Toucan]

Benjamin Hernandez, I'm unsure, I think it's next Wednesday but it could be Thursday we said to meet up, sorry I forgot, can you remind me please mate. It was the big Tescos on the corner opposite the storage warehouses, right? Also, how is Alan doing? Send him my regards incase he can't make it next week! Cheers dude.

[@edwelndiobel1567]

I thought you said pickpocked a letter from a customer.

[@GRosa]

@@Pudji.Toucan 🤔

[@Pudji.Toucan]

@@GRosa dude, this was 7 months ago, that opportunity has way passed, my friend. He turned up but it was Friday in the end, neither Wednesday or Thursday, but thanks mate, he called and we met on the Friday......7 months back 😏

[@zootaxy7589]

@@Pudji.Toucan are we still on for Tuesday next week

[@TheBushdoctor68]

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.

[@nullvoid3545]

What sorcery is this?!?

[@ianmchale770]

@@nullvoid3545 postal sorcery

[@Malkontent1003]

@@nullvoid3545 US Postal Service is one of the things the country has that works really well. Sure, it's slow sometimes, and convoluted rules are convoluted. But the letter will nearly always arrive.

[@phoomphgaming5538]

Dude? Wtf, where is my package 💀

[@matthewviramontes3131]

To: SAMANTHA, ARLINGTON 👱 From: STEVE 🤡

[@IAmGrum]

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

[@p_serdiuk]

Natural selection, only the best aren't laid off.

[@DemsW]

and you are the one making it harder and less necessary everyday by training the competition

[@Max24871]

I would argue it gets more important, because what is rejected by today's automated system will almost certainly be completely illegible by the average person

[@RossMitchellsProfile]

I don't think it will ever become completely unneccessary, even if everyone standardised on a single type of label and formatting you'd still have the issue of labels becoming damaged in post for these folk to deal with.

[@blumoogle2901]

It's like cheques, eventually it gets so rare that they will just stop offering the service and leave the last few people still using it with no choice but to switch over to the new system or stop using it completely.

[@Kyrrial]

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.

[@user-njyzcip]

It's 2022, you'd think they'll simply serialise every letter that can't be OCR'd with a QR code or barcode if the worker can't process it in time and toss it into a secondary loop that will insert the letter a few minutes later, by which time it should be processed, instead of having it hold up all the mail behind it. Like, QR code isn't hard...

[@Prirrie]

Did you get paid well?

[@stephenwithaph1566]

It looks like the pay is okay. The job search sites pin it at a median salary to slightly higher than median. Not enough to make up for what it does to your hands I'm sure.

[@tommyb6611]

The moment they demand of you to scan and type every 4 seconds a new image and do it all the time should tell you it's slavery and abusive and no person should even go there. Let them computers handle it and then if the computers can't figure it, a person will physically check and slowly type and try to identify. Not to demand from some person to waste their mental health trying to keep up under 4 seconds reading weird text.

[@CyranoHounds]

I worked at a REC too. It's tough work but the benefits were great. The training took 6 weeks. But once you pick it up you can code fast. I loved the Santa Claus and Easter bunny mail too. It all goes to a real place to be read and answered by real humans. I would still be doing it if they hadn't closed our REC.

[@thedoublek4816]

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.

[@aobunau]

now try reading armenian

[@beckerderbacker4976]

I had to transcribe my ancestor's late 19th century German registry of marriage. It wasn't Sütterlin but it was close and it was hard to do. Took me quite a while!

[@ViperhawkX]

At least it's not Cyrillic cursive, that stuff is downright unreadable even when it's done carefully.

[@secretforreddit]

@@ViperhawkX It's so much fun to write, though!

[@Leofwine]

I can read and write medieval scripts (except maybe the worst cursive styles), 19th century German cursive, Sütterlin and Spencerian handwriting. I'm apparently good enough that a friend of mine, who works at an archive, regularly asks me to transcribe stuff for him - as a second opinion/failsafe.

[@chrayez]

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.

[@tojiko6868]

Ah, the joys of language.

[@pengwin_]

sorta like how Americans say "Merry Christmas" and Brits say "Happy Christmas" you'd think it'd be the other way around.

[@mikefochtman7164]

As 'Professor Higgins' was heard to say, "Why can't the English, speak English? Why in America, it hasn't been spoken for years..." :)

[@Fireinthedarkness666]

Like how you park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.

[@sheevinopalpatino4782]

@@mikefochtman7164 Merry and Happy have both been used for many, many years m'lad.

[@maxwhite4732]

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.

[@bubbledoubletrouble]

For some reason it reminds me of Asimov’s short story “The Feeling of Power”.

[@esverker7018]

As someone that does historical document work, this is very striking sometimes. As powerful as computers are, nothing does pattern recognition and problem-solving like the human brain. I've transcribed many letters that were over 200 years old that a computer had no hope of parsing (shout out to Zachary Taylor's terrible handwriting). When myself and these folks lose our jobs is when computers have really outstripped us.

[@wasdwasd609]

Only remedy for crappy human error is more humans.

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

The human brain is the most powerful computer there is.

[@SamSitar]

i enjoyed it too,

[@Neko-ye6lc]

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

[@pa1Z]

How long did it take you to get a comfortable speed without thinking about it too much?

[@jonbongjovi1869]

what about if we draw ART on the envelopes? Can the optical scanners get around this? I always love to draw art or cartoons and even word bubbles!

[@SilverFlame819]

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.

[@CreditSolutionist]

Omg, same! I always tell people that the most fun job I ever had was when I was at the REC in the 2000s. It's good to see someone else who loved that job as much as I did!

[@pacefka]

Great bosses??? You must have worked at a good REC. Most of the ones at mine were assholes. Luckily my personal ones were nice.

[@SilverFlame819]

@@pacefka There is only one REC in the country now...

[@imzjustplayin]

If you paid attention, there used to be 55 of them back in 1997.@@SilverFlame819

[@lthomsenrig]

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

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

They actually have a separate wing of the building that's dedicated entirely to doctor's handwriting. It takes their best workers.

[@PhattyMo]

@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 It's staffed by ex-pharmacists.

[@thes7754]

@@PhattyMo i was about to say the same thing

[@thes7754]

@@PhattyMo those guys can literally make meaning out of squiggles

[@vintagethrifter2114]

They can tell if it's a doctor's handwriting or if someone is having a stroke.

[@demonlordd9079]

Would've been cool if you included a "master" doing it to see how fast they do it

[@jul_wac]

Not really

[@chapystick_]

Would have to blur the entire screen so you wouldn’t really be able to tell 😕

[@thek3317]

@@chapystick_ they could have had to master do the test letters as well

[@t3lls]

@@chapystick_ A professional could have done the demo Tom did... :)

[@elllieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

@@thek3317 did you consider maybe they need the 'master' doing their job?

[@barkbark5645]

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

[@mrmistermelom]

They still do it nevertheless

[@captainkeyboard1007]

Those people are the American Best. They make my mail go 80 words per minute faster than eight seconds of a telephone call. I do send conventional mail by keyboarding it and printing it out from my color laser printer. I am blessed that I learned typewriting when I was 12 years old.

[@n646n]

@@captainkeyboard1007 color laser printer 🤓

[@captainkeyboard1007]

That would be a great thing if people would learn how to keyboard.

[@chhite7590]

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.

[@crushmonkey801]

Micro Management

[@SithLord2064]

It's not just the pace that's an issue. Rules change constantly. Management micro managing every little thing. Unknown audits every week checking your precision, then catching hell if your accuracy drops below 98%. Tracking every break to the millisecond, so you don't have management breathing down your neck about your schedule adherence. Boredom from repetitive mail types. (PARS Mail Class, for example). When my REC turned into a Customer Care Center and we started taking phone calls instead of keying mail, I was so relieved. Got a pay increase, and didn't have to continue the mindless drudgery of the REC. Former Glendale/Wichita REC employee

[@PinkHairDontCare]

Soul-draining, micro-management, constant new information and change of rules, all true. I've worked two very similar jobs and they drain you. I've worked other terrible jobs but these kind are the most mind-numbing, and they also forbid you from listening to music or podcasts to pass the time. At least with doing this same work at the USPS there is a sense of purpose since you're trying to help people send and receive mail. Data entry can be fine, you just need plenty of breaks to stretch and walk, and the freedom to listen to something to pass the time, but most places won't allow that.

[@9thstreet]

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.

[@eddiew2325]

At the end of the day I still feel like I should've been there to witness history. But I tell ya the experience is well worth the cost

[@ivok9846]

what's your job today?

[@snazzyjovialwyrm3314]

That's pattern recognition for you. The average human brain is extremely advance at pattern recognition, to the point of making up patterns where they don't exist.

[@ivok9846]

@@snazzyjovialwyrm3314 what do you mean? hallucinations, shizophrenia, seeing faces in patterns of stone/wall? or did you think about conspiracy theories? heh...

[@pinkajou656]

@@ivok9846 well all of those are valid examples of that exact thing

[@tunafeesh]

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

[@rickross9829]

He probably doesn't have to do the job we see in the video anymore.

[@justinbombach9873]

Well it's probably not often that somebody comes to record a KZbin video about his job...

[@__Razer]

@@rickross9829 You're probably right and that's where he can find the enthusiasm to talk about it.

[@XxZigonxX]

because he is the boss, data processing is the most tedious and annoying job i could never do that

[@lordday7272]

I doubt the actual employees have much fun. Fast data entry gets old real fast, though I'm sure there are some people who like it.

[@Hayhaycat0908]

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!

[@beccabbea2511]

I have actually done something called ‘reverse indexing' that teaches a computer to read handwriting in old records. This speeds up the indexing of census records in particular allowing the records to be released earlier. Computer recognition is getting more and more sophisticated. It’s amazing to see it in action, even if it’s briefly.

[@martinkeegan270]

Aha! I did the data ingest management of the UK and US censuses for a big genealogy website, along with a couple of thousand other datasets, and I always wondered how they got the transcriptions I was receiving!

[@JustMe-ks8qc]

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.

[@Call-me-Al]

Thank you!

[@Robert-cu9bm]

Gives people a job though.

[@MGSLurmey]

@@Robert-cu9bm Ah yes "Keep doing things poorly so people still have jobs!"

[@JustMe-ks8qc]

@@Call-me-Al Happy to help😀

[@gaelansteele9224]

I've never understood why return addresses never caught on in the UK - we always do a full return address in the top left in the US.

[@Oboak]

Watching this to reassure myself that my grandmas mail will get to its destination

[@Oboak]

Update: not sure how her mail EVER makes it’s way to the receiver 😂

[@misaloelric2455]

Another update

[@stopmikeandjim3196]

I worked at one of these 20 years ago. It's mind numbing work. Typing nearly nonstop your entire shift

[@Milesco]

It would drive me crazy.

[@The359]

As a USPS Automation Clerk and On The Job Instructor who regularly runs and assists DIOSS and AFCS machines, it's amazing to finally see what the REC site is like. They do fantastic work to get rejected mail turned around back into readable, barcoded mail in only a few hours.

[@Okanoggin]

Do you know if the OCR they use is commercial or proprietary? I am mostly just curious if all the manual work put in also helps the ocr program learn. I work for a startup doing some very similar work and this is incredibly intriguing.

[@the_wretched]

If only the USPS did a fantastic job of being a good place to work for...

[@incognitoburrito6020]

@@the_wretched Maybe if someone stopped cutting their funding they could make some improvements

[@publiusvalerius8934]

@@Okanoggin OCR like this is likely available to companies like Ancestry that pores through millions of handwritten words per day from even worse conditions. I have a feeling a lot of proprietary work goes on for the USPS and Ancestry

[@vysharra]

@@incognitoburrito6020 they don’t get funding, they’re self-funded. The issue is they haven’t been allowed to raise rates after asking many times and they have been forced to fund retirement for postal workers who haven’t been born yet.

[@tbotalpha8133]

This reminds me of something Terry Pratchett wrote into one of his Discworld novels. The Ankh-Morpork Postal Service had a Dead Letter Office, which dealt with mail that was addressed... creatively, let's say, by the frequently lazy, illiterate and/or insane citizens of Ankh-Morpork. The joke being that the staff weren't just reading illegible addresses, but also interpreting the vague details to figure out where the sender actually intended the letter to go. The people employed in the Office were noted for being particularly sharp; the kinds of people who would complete cryptic crosswords in their heads for fun.

[@sianthesheep]

I thought of this too and now I'm wondering if Terry came up with the Dead Letter Office independently, or whether he was inspired real life Dead Letter Offices like this one! Knowing his immense knowledge of obscure things I would chance the latter!

[@tbotalpha8133]

@@sianthesheep Almost certainly the latter. The Discworld novels are full of references to things in real life, though Pratchett obviously pushed the idea of a Dead Letter Office just a step further into comic absurdity.

[@wendinicolemunson492]

This is EXACTLY where my mind went!

[@NoLongerBreathedIn]

"Duzbuns Hopsit Pfarrmerc" = "K. Whistler Bakery, 4 Pigsty Ln", according to Lord Vetinari (there being three bakeries that could be described as opposite a pharmacy, but only Whistler does buns.)

[@monicasmalley3336]

@@NoLongerBreathedIn This is exactly the example I was trying to think of, but I couldn't remember the last word. Thanks Eyal :)

[@Jynxedlove]

My dad worked in LaGuardia as a mail processor and union rep. I remember as a child there was so much mail going through there and it seemed like it was all being hand sorted. I can't believe that it has gotten so automated since I was a kid, but it also makes perfect sense. The used to be shouting locations out as they threw the packages to each other to get them on the right conveyor belts.

[@IHWKR]

Assuming all 810 employees process 1.2 billion images per year and accounting for weekends and federal holidays and no vacations this branch processes over 5,900 images per person per day. Knowing that not all employees actually process these images and providing vacations raises this number even higher. If the average time a letter is on the screen then you're looking at over 7200 letters per day per employee while keeping a recently 120 keystrokes per minute. Kudos to those employees! Side note at 2:45 I never knew all those street suffixes existed.

[@davidwilkinson2234]

I work there! got to talk to Tom for a minute after he filmed this one, super nice guy. Thanks for coming.

[@Treemaster16]

Nice

[@byever1]

Remove Joe Biden from office

[@crushmonkey801]

Lucky you! Tom was the Chair for his university's Student Union, but the Union at the REC was denied even access to welcome him. Management flat out refused.

[@hippiemcfake6364]

Cool topic, but a few things I'd have loved to see: 1. The difficult examples you guys kept mentioning 2. A pro doing it 3. How do the people there like their job? To me it seems soul crushing but maybe they enjoy the flow state? 4. What's the bottleneck for automated processing? Machine learning has gotten so good that I wonder what kind of image can be processed in four second by a human but not by a machine given that there are billions of training examples.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

the OCR can only recognize handwriting that resembles letters, but anything written in script can turn into an endless line of waves which the machine simply can't read. And funny enough, as we write stuff less and less by hand the average person's handwriting gets continuously worse which makes it more and more challenging for computers to read the mail

[@hippiemcfake6364]

@@thesteelrodent1796 that would have been the case a few years ago, but machine learning based image processing/computer vision has become incredibly good to the point where it can match or exceed experienced doctors at interpreting medical images, even when they only had a few thousand images to train the model on. With billions of examples to train on, you'd be surprised how well models can perform.

[@TheBauwssss]

very simple example: CAPTCHA with word, or character sequence recognition from an incredibly convoluted and difficult to distinguish (e.g. low contrast) printed version of that same word or character sequence.

[@xmlthegreat]

The reason they can't show pros at work is because of the same privacy reasons that Tom states at the start. It's also probably illegal to do that. Same for actual samples to be shown. As for tougher examples, that would probably entail some training before taking the test, which Tom obviously did not have time to step through.

[@hippiemcfake6364]

@@xmlthegreat Sure they also have more difficult training examples? That's what I understood them to be talking about. Those can be shown.

[@Foxtrotopia]

Besides the fact that this actual job is insane, it's also really insane that the computer systems are now so good that it only takes 810 people to read the horrible handwriting of 330,000,000 people

[@tvm73836]

I’m so proud that my professor, the late Dr. Sargur Srihari of Computer Science department at SUNY Buffalo, was responsible for the amazing OCR that Ryan Bollock referred to. He was considered a pioneer in this space. The USPS funded our lab. So the core of the USPS was invented right here in the good old US of A 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

By someone born in good old India. ;-)

[@tvm73836]

@ Yes Sir, and he was very proud of that fact. His Bio is still up on the SUNY Buffalo site. He and his team have several U.S. Patents in this space including Patent # 5,321,768.

[@crushmonkey801]

Fun Fact: There is only one Clerk at the SLC REC actually trained in OCR and FontPlus Certified :D

[@raydunakin]

I can't even imagine how it's possible to do this job as quickly and accurately as required, but I'm sure glad there are people who can do it.

[@myxzlabs5635]

The job isn't for us

[@zyeborm]

My brain is leaking out my ears just thinking about it

[@halbarber3]

If you are ADHD like me, this job is a nightmare. I trained for 2 weeks and hated every minute of it.

[@eg1885]

I can't imagine doing it 8 hours per day, 5 days a week. I would want to rip my eyes out.

[@myxzlabs5635]

@@eg1885 ur parent did that

[@CosmoDrazi]

I used to work there. As soon as newbies get out of probation, they're allowed to listen to music/podcasts on personal headphones so it's not as mind-numbing as people assume. After enough experience it became easy to enter a state of flow and breeze through a workday while I jammed out to my custom playlist. One image every four seconds on average was more than achievable when most images only need five keystrokes to process. The down-side is that they were perpetually understaffed to the point that mandatory 12-hour shifts three or four days per week became the norm every week for two and a half years. Turnover rates were exceptionally high. The HR department didn't expect anyone to have a life outside of work and treated everyone like interchangeable and disposable cogs in the machine. The only time off I was allowed to take was to attend funerals. Any attempts to get my schedule changed were met with deflection, diversion, and denial. I'd probably still be there working (mostly) happily if HR hadn't attempted to transfer me to graveyard shift in a different facility despite my recorded disapproval. Don't get me wrong; The pay was good and I found the work enjoyable for my personality type. However, the bureaucratic upper management was a nightmare. As the old saying goes, "you don't quit jobs; you quit bosses."

[@whiskey_pink_42]

So you made career and quit? Unfortunately too common. They used to let you skip the promotion and remain a PSE if you wanted.

[@marshmelows]

Thanks for sharing this. It adds up perfectly to the video!

[@thedavesiknow4598]

Usps refers to employees as "human capital".

[@SilverFlame819]

Youch! I worked there too, and I LOVED it. We only had mandatory overtime usually near the holidays. My boss was AWESOME!

[@avacurtis2729]

What happens if you guys still can't read it? Does it get thrown out?

[@Samantha-pn4zk]

So this is how every one of my husband's letters is processed. Fascinating! Just wish I had that technology to read his grocery lists.

[@blueninja115]

As someone with terrible handwriting and often end up botching the address and having to write over letters, thank you for your service

[@darxmurf]

"we have 3 fiber optic lines coming into the building at different points..." I know a datacenter who had the same kind of setup, unfortunately, all the fibers ended in the same pipe a few kilometers away and a machine broke this pipe 😀

[@nickcollins1052]

Objective Failed. Successfully.

[@lottievixen]

oh gosh... this is exactly why they are meant to diverge and not be together at any point (used to be a telecomms technician in a DC) same thing applies incide DCs as outside.

[@AleksandrStrizhevskiy]

Comcast lost service to all of South West Florida for several hours one day. On one hand they got it resolved in less than a day which is a major relief. On the other hand, how does and entire region lose service like that? Reminded me of the 2003 East Coast Blackout.

[@darxmurf]

@@lottievixen Absolutely, unfortunately, you never know how providers are managing their lines. In this situation, the DataCenter had different lines from different providers, everything was well planned...

[@williamjenkins4913]

I was wondering about that. Most ISPs have contracts to share infrastructure.

[@playdeebug4400]

i worked at one of these facilities in the 90’s in texas. Our location processed all mail going in and out of colorado. You had to train for 2 weeks learning the short cuts for zip codes and street addresses. Once you started encoding real mail.. your computer was randomly monitored to check your accuracy. If, by the end of the month you had something like a 97% accuracy.. you would get a bonus. I was obsessed with being fast an accurate so I had a friend write a program in javascript that mimicked the program at work. I would practice for hours at home. all in all.. it was a fun job

[@AdamLaMore]

Hell, I'd play that game for free. Have you ever played Papers Please? At it's heart it's about processing immigration paperwork and identifying discrepancies and errors (there's a story on top of that as well).

[@whiskey_pink_42]

Beaumont?

[@albertbatfinder5240]

100% agree. Certain brains (yours and mine!) get a minor buzz out of solving problems quickly, accurately and efficiently. That’s what’s going on here.

[@bzqp2]

Jeez, it's like playing a trucker sim in your free time after driving a truck for 12 hours.

[@FAT9L]

@@albertbatfinder5240 that's me as well. Nothing wrong with it, the creatives need us as much as we need them.

[@beet6796]

this job seems soul crushing

[@valeriepark9444]

Loving how the most re-watched portion of the video is of the "Where to send letters to Santa Claus" sign

[@Boost00130]

I did this job for the Royal Mail for a short time. The training was brutal because of the speed you had to process them. The upside was that we were mandated a 10 minute break every hour

[@ArchangelSteve]

I did it for over a decade mate, those eye breaks kept me sane.

[@lordjelly7194]

Got to love those eyebreaks. Just enough time to run down for a cig before the next stint. Plus audiobooks and podcasts

[@Boost00130]

@@lordjelly7194 we used to take out 10 minutes right before our lunch break.

[@danwoodward23]

And the kids santa letters

[@esverker7018]

No for real, I do similar stuff in academia (transcribing/annotating really old documents) and the mental exhaustion is crazy. I feel locked in my own mind if I don't stop and go look at something else.

[@ieuan4real]

I actually did this job for Royal Mail as a Christmas Temp in my second year of university (did night shifts whilst attending lectures, tough). And what they say about pace and accuracy at the end is really true. Royal Mail always tracked your letters processed per hour (the minimum was 750 letters per hour iirc, and people were let go if they didn't make it) and sampled your letters to ensure your accuracy was to standard (can't remember now, but I think it was over 80%?). I only did it for two months but peaked at 1500 letters per hour (or about 25 letters a minute, so nearly 1 every 2 seconds) with over 95% accuracy. The concentration required was tough, especially as there were multiple things that had their own shortcuts you had to remember. (plus certain countries, like the US, China and India, paid for us to process their letters before they left the UK so you had to learn THEIR postal rules as well.) But I actually kind of enjoyed it. (And yes, if it was a slow night we did read your postcards haha.) This video brought back alot of memories of those night shifts and I can very much relate! Even if their rules were a little different. Thanks! :)

[@Meimoons]

Read the postcards?? Like the outside of it, if there was a message written outside the envelope?

[@kinoko384]

@@Meimoons Postcards aren't sent in envelopes. The address is written on the same side of the message.

[@ieuan4real]

@@Meimoons as said by kinoko, postcards are not sent in envelopes. There is the picture on one side and then the other side you write the address and your message.

[@StephenEden]

I did this too when I was at uni! I worked nights at the plymouth Mdec centre, great pay if I remember correctly. At least I know why there are this orange dots on some letters now.

[@guthabanglasdash8641]

Thank you for service to your queen and the crown from A Yank in the states across the pond

[@threadEvent]

This is... Really cool. I love that it shows the U.S. Post Office is actually incredibly innovative, and really always has been for such a large country with so much rural landscape to cover - yet here we are, with politicians actively trying to destroy and privatize one of the pillars of communication and economy (yes, economy. Many Post Offices used to double as banks backed by the Federal Government for rural communites that didn't have access to major private institutions.)

[@a24396]

I'm so impressed by the post office. Everytime I think I have all the information I need to justify my amazement over the job they do I learn more, and it just blows my mind!

[@Jazzled]

As someone working for a department in US State gov, it's a bit therapeutic to see someone having to interact with the particular kind of weird quirks state/fed systems and processes have.

[@PsychCaptain]

I totally feel the same.

[@PrograError]

at least it's not coders handling code for the 30s computer which uses some dead language on the level of Latin...

[@Jazzled]

@@PrograError This hits too close to my day job pains. 😭 Change in business process vs change in legacy system design. No one wants to be the one to change (understandably).

[@PrograError]

@@Jazzled hey at least just remember that even the almighty US military uses a jumbotron hard disk from the 60s, similar to the save icon you'd see in Word, GTA Vice City, if you were feeling despair of your management...

[@whiskey_pink_42]

Lowest bidder/made in the 90’s?? Yep. It’s a quasi federal job but we still follow federal rules on purchasing. There’s chairs we got in the 60’s that are still in use.

[@deeser]

An old teacher of mine once got a Christmas card addressed to "Mr Hall, House with big brown dog, Oxfordshire, England" sent from ex-student of his in Zimbabwe - recognised the handwriting -and accepted it. Only took a week and a half from being sent to arrival and the Postie won a crate of beer for getting it right. Beat that, computers! :)

[@ameliauhh]

I wonder how they were able to figure it out? Amazing!!

[@googiegress7459]

@@ameliauhh Probably searched for Hall in the customer list to come up with a few candidates, and phoned the letter carrier(s) who would have delivered to those addresses and asked them if any of those specific houses had a big brown dog. If you get it down to just one, show the customer the handwriting - in this case, Duncan said recognizing the handwriting made the teacher accept it. These days, they'd just pull up your Citizen Profile and look for social media posts with DOG,LARGE,BROWN photos coupled with large volumes of dog food purchased using his store loyalty cards.

[@achim8239]

@@googiegress7459 Years ago, a guy I studied with worked as a mailman in the summer. He said that he was handed a booklet where he was to note down all relevant information for each address (such as "letter box moved to side entrance", "beware of dog", "no door bell, knock if you need someone to sign sth."). Valuable source of information.

[@ytbvdshrtnr]

@@achim8239 Reminds me of the book Nick Burkhardt always had to check in Grimm to figure out how to deal with the Wesen of the week

[@is-yn6jf]

There's a pen pal service running from Dubbo in regional Australia for isolated people that started during lockdown, and they've shared some addresses from people who've just kind of heard of them and that they run from that town, really sweet and amazing that they arrive

[@blitzalex4142]

Every teacher that has had to correct an exam of mine would be employee of the month here

[@nightslights970]

Hello Tom, I just want to say I love you're informative videos, and never stop them from ending! Information is power, and you spread power to all those who watch you. Much love, NightsLights.❤❤❤

[@PenumbralVT]

It's thanks to these guys that doctors can send any mail at all, the true heroes of the modern world

[@kobzyy]

especially the different wing for doctor's handwriting and doctor's letters

[@EdgyShooter]

@Maxx B. Hmm is that two tablets every 7 hours or 7 tablets ever two hours...

[@doantranvan1844]

ok

[@jameswon3254]

Wow! My mind is blown that there is still one left. I retired in 2000 as a technician babysitting this system at Chula Vista, CA on graveyard shift. We were shutdown in phase two as handwriting recognition software improved. When I was working, 300 operators were idle. Best job I ever had in the USPS.

[@Elliot9874]

What did you do after? Profession?

[@handsoffmycactus2958]

@@Elliot9874 he said he retired in 2000? Are you blind.

[@spencer2220]

@@handsoffmycactus2958 No need to be rude.

[@CadillacDriver]

@@spencer2220 there is. People need to comprehend things.

[@Washo1903]

@@CadillacDriver Retiring doesn't necessarily mean that somebody never gets another job, just that they left that one.

[@alextheasparagus6675]

I'm a postman in Sweden, and at my office we get mail from a central processing terminal which we hand sort to the individual adresses and then deliver them. I've always wondered how the machine reads really unclear handwriting and still manages to send it to the correct post office! I don't know if it's the same here, but maybe it's something similar. Very cool.

[@mustuploadtoo7543]

tom scott is like that teacher that you wish you could hug and tell them you are proud of them and never stop. thanks tom.

[@Liberty_Freedom_Brotherhood]

He’s given up KZbin now

[@aaron-hsu86]

I kinda wished we could have seen how quickly an employee does this. Even if you couldn't have filmed an employee there working, a demonstration by Ryan going through the training material would have sufficed. I know I felt, just watching Tom's speed, "I could have done the same with my own keyboard," so I really wanted to see the difference between the average person and someone trained for the job. Still, very cool to see.

[@ArchangelSteve]

Over here in the UK our minimum was 7,500 keystrokes per hour.

[@ToyKeeper]

7150 keystrokes per hour, for 8 hours? Wow. That's 57k keystrokes per day... which is roughly double my daily average as a programmer who works and communicates almost entirely in text. Sure, I have days where I get close to 100k total, but my average is only 28k or so. I spend most of my time thinking rather than actually typing, and even then, my hands still hurt occasionally.

[@jinglemyberries866]

@@ArchangelSteve carpal tunnel syndrome must be common in that profession

[@Freya_Blue]

Flaw in that would be he's seen the training material before so he'd be even quicker.

[@jimmypatton4982]

@@Freya_Blue even if they only had one set of training material. (Which is unlikely, because they just spoiled some of it on this KZbin video). Take the person that has been working for 5 years and hasn’t needed remedial training. (Since their job trains them on how to do their job, doubt this training would be done annually or anything). Not sure about you, but I certainly don’t remember what some mail said 5 years ago.

[@FabbrizioPlays]

I'd imagine this is a lot more difficult if you weren't raised in the US. It didn't occur to me until watching this, how much culture impacts place names, and by extension, what we expect places to be named. He says "you're not a sleuth, you key by the rules" but at some point, being able to tell what letter was written is a question of predicting the word.

[@earincopper9975]

This is probably one of the reasons the OCR tech can work so well, too: recognising just "ordinary free text" is a much harder problem than recognising something from the space of US addresses.

[@evildude109]

Like in that example that Tom got stuck on, Ft. Lauderdale. I would have gotten that one in a second because I grew up near there, I have been primed to know it means Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

[@FabbrizioPlays]

@@evildude109 it's easy to miss, but on that one he actually knew it was Fort Lauderdale. His question was if he should correct it to "Fort" or leave it abbreviated as Ft.

[@Taschenschieber]

@@evildude109 Fort Lauderdale is one of those US places which somehow come up on international news on a regular basis. I'd easily have recognized "Ft. Lauderdale" as an abbreviation of "Fort Lauderdale" despite not even being a native speaker, I just wouldn't have been certain which state it was in off the top of my head - which wouldn't have mattered because it says "Florida" on the envelope. So this isn't exactly some kind of secret regional lore.

[@Riley_Mundt]

@@Taschenschieber That's likely due to international travelers to Florida regularly being the target of muggings in the 90's because they were easy to spot. It got so bad that some European news stations were airing "How to stay safe when vacationing in Florida" segments.

[@TheHomeskoolER]

Thank you for always answering questions that I never knew I had.

[@masongaston1171]

As an employee who works in an distro center in automation, finally learning what OCR means and what happened to the clear mail going to the reject bin is very satisfying, thank you.

[@mattlampe]

Tom's ability to get interviews and demonstrations at these obscure places always amazes me!

[@MarcelVos]

I think obscure places are actually more likely to give interviews as they less way fewer requests. I'm not particularly amazed by him getting this interview. However, things like the Red Arrows are definitely amazing and a testament to Tom's awesome KZbin career.

[@darrennew8211]

He has mentioned a few times that people will call him up and ask him if he wants to come see something interesting.

[@JohnRay1969]

Most places of business are willing to give tours or limited demonstrations upon request. They don't necessarily have "open house" day but if you are interested and ask they will schedule a tour or explanation of their mission and process. Most people just don't ask because they don't realize it could be possible.

[@MrDannyDetail]

All saying that he presumably couldn't persuade Royal Mail to let him see their very similar version of this centre (I think in Sheffield?), so had to go to the expense of travelling to the US instead.

[@el_dani]

Throw him an interesting bone and he will message you directly (or his staff)!

[@ruubennn]

They put in alot more effort than exam graders in the UK, we're told if it's too hard to read they just won't bother 😅

[@khalilahd.]

😅😅

[@ddenisehhoy8369]

To be fair we are told that about exams here as well

[@jul_wac]

You didn't even watch the video yet and are already commenting. Lmao

[@Baconlessness]

This is entirely reasonable considering how important/sensitive some letters and packages may be.

[@wasdf999]

That's the point, they are teaching you so people CAN read what you write

[@jacksonharting9073]

It really worked for me after I look and try some tutorials, yours is the one that worked. Owe you a lot.

[@kosaelectronics]

Ohh, now I see why my mail was never delivered to Santa

[@jackdog06]

I swear to god Tom Scott’s ability to release a video on a topic I was GENUINELY wondering the previous day is astounding. He did the same thing when I bought a radio clock. This dude is spying on me.

[@SergioR00]

Well please continue giving him excellent video ideas !

[@adajones4490]

I swear I was also just thinking about this yesterday. My jaw dropped when I saw this in my notifications.

[@1lovesoni]

Karl Jung had some interesting (though slightly outlandish) theories about this phenomenon, usually referred to as "shared/collective subconscious"

[@Killerean]

Can you please move the towel a bit? It's obscuring the camera feed. :D

[@PanduPoluan]

He's not spying on you. He's planted an implant in your brain. He knows your thought.

[@tedioustotoro4885]

I love how, at 3:59, there’s just randomly art from the game ‘Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time’ on the screen. Probably just the employee personalising their dashboard.

[@ethan-loves]

Good eye!

[@chappuis73]

Wow, nice catch! I loved this game and certainly didn't expect to see a reference to it like that

[@knife-dog6070]

i saw that too lmao

[@potupchik]

That was actually put there by Ryan Bullock, the guy being interviewed. He created that workbook, so he adds little pictures there with every update to it.

[@ryanbullock2971]

It's true what Potupchik said; I put new cartoon or video game characters in the middle of that workbook to get the supervisors' attention when I've made a change. When you hover the mouse over it, a description of what's new appears. Good catch Tedious Totoro. I like playing that game with my kids.

[@crismcdonough2804]

I did this for 7 years and 9 months at the remote encoding facility in east Pittsburgh. From 1995-2003. Thanks for the memories.

[@effortlessproductions]

My dad has worked for the USPS around 26 years and knows about this place, yet never knew how it worked. Great video!

[@KitKhat]

The United States Postal Service does a lot of work to ensure that mail goes where it needs to! And they're funded through revenue from stamps and service fees.... so if you'd like to support the USPS, they have an online store where they sell stamps (of course) as well as collectors items, cards, puzzles, toys, and even clothes! :D

[@ConWolfDoubleO7]

I also suggest the USPS museum if you're ever in D.C.! Its a great museum and the history is very interesting.

[@CaptainHalyard]

@@ConWolfDoubleO7 Agreed. When I was passing through D.C. a couple years back, I had a fairly large backpack with me. The postal museum was one of the only museums in the area which allowed you to bring backpacks of that size in with you, and it turned out to be a far more interesting experience than I had been expecting (the original plan was to visit the Smithsonian, which I'd still like to do one day). A very pleasant surprise indeed, especially learning about how they delivered mail in the earliest days of the postal service. Definitely worth a visit :)

[@divinecomedian2]

And funded by tax dollars. Gee, sure am glad to subsidize the 95% of my mail that's complete junk.

[@BenKurtovic]

@@divinecomedian2 "The Postal Service generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations."

[@romangagg5328]

@@BenKurtovic as a letter carrier, it's always funny when a customer red facedly yells "I pay taxes for your paycheck, so do what I say" with some unreasonable demand

[@JossCard42]

I worked at this very center for a short time. The hours were exhausting, but the pay was great. Once you get up to speed as a new data entry drone, you're allowed a headphone in while working so you can listen to music or audiobooks. I listened to the entire Song of Ice and Fire series while working there.

[@Tacsponge]

I had a similar job processing handwritten travel insurance claims. Spent all my lunch breaks at the library using the public WiFi to download more audio

[@azraelle6232]

I used to try and find the longest audiobooks while working here. I remember finishing the entire Sherlock Holmes anthology in less than a week.

[@sharpieman2035]

@@azraelle6232 I finished it in less than a week in middle school. Good times.

[@perkypears]

thank god for headphones. exhausting repetitive jobs are made 1000x more bearable by listening to a book or podcast

[@mdoerkse]

I would think listening to a book would interfere with reading the addresses. At least for my brain.

[@MethosTR]

I did a somewhat similar job to this, except it was data conversion at the IRS, transcribing paper tax returns into the ISRP system. It seems mind numbingly boring at the beginning, but after your training when you get the live work, it becomes much easier and quicker for your brain to get into a groove. The training has a lot of challenging and complex scenarios to prep you for just about anything you might encounter on someone's taxes, but for the most part the live work was really easy, with only a couple pages in each tax form for the majority of the work. I remember the days flying by, as I would sit at my workstation listening to music or a good podcast, only getting up for a break or lunch. It was one of the easiest and chill jobs I've ever done, and I'd do it again if I could.

[@AuntyProton]

I did this job for 14 years at one of the RECs that's closed now. Good to see it again, I did 1100 images an hour.

[@NotALotOfColonial_SpaghettiToG]

god damn! thanks for your work, I'm a guy with the handwriting of a cockroach running across the page.

[@Nabeelco]

It would have been really cool to see a pro take on those addresses after Tom, for a speed comparison. The numbers mentioned for speed are not very tangible conceptually, but actually seeing a pro key them in would have been awesome.

[@SamSitar]

yes i want to see that as well.

[@MaxIronsThird]

A "Pro" will do a mail every 1 to 3 seconds, while Tom was taking over 10 seconds.

[@xGatoDelFuegox]

I really, really wanted to see it at max speed!

[@azraelle6232]

When I did this job, I think my personal best was close to 16,000 keystrokes per hour, and I wasn't even in the top 10%.

[@RichardDegenne]

As an IT engineer, I can assure you that the Excel spreadsheet at 3:59 is what nightmares are made of.

[@inesis]

Thank god you haven't seen my spreadsheets then... 🤣

[@asicdathens]

The level of IT maturity for a company is inversely proportional to the number of worksheets floating around

[@PrograError]

management : but it's cheap...

[@nankinink]

Holy crap didnt notice that was a spreadsheet. That'as a nightmare for sure LMAO

[@jbird4478]

I didn't even see it was a spreadsheet. I assumed it was some specialized software. What kind of monster would make that as a spreadsheet?

[@Zzazs]

Thankyou for not showing the mail like most youtubers would, You sir are one of the best and most thoughtful youtubers

[@justice7ca245]

that job honestly looks like hell

[@jacob_90s]

As a programmer, the idea of having to write a system to parse addresses just immediately gives me a migraine, and that's without even having to decipher handwriting.

[@darekmistrz4364]

How about system operating at the same time with users and background processing in all possible timezones?

[@SomeGuysGarage]

​@@darekmistrz4364 easy...timezones aren't a big problem. Also, the decipher handwriting you just hand off to an OCR library/service, that's not a big deal. The parsing addresses, they do follow normal forms and with a db to look up in, isn't that bad to figure out. The hardest part of these systems is the performance, the throughput/timeliness of VES when it's against an active sort line, with a human in the mix, is challenging.

[@akamesama]

Luckily, USPS provides a very robust API for doing this. And it still is a nightmare. We had the API giving different responses bad responses if the second street line included room information, but good if it was included inline with the postal address. Another, the system was overriding the correct address that USPS will deliver to, but overwriting it with an address that gets incorrectly delivered. International addresses though... *shutters*

[@darekmistrz4364]

@@SomeGuysGarage That's true. I know some systems where one machine learning response is over 90 seconds. That letter would always go to "process later" box.

[@Beedlejuce]

As the guy who did it, it sucked.

[@purplekey9330]

One time my handwriting was so bad on a letter, they literally sent it between 5 post offices for a month. I did the math and the letter traveled 600 miles because no one wanted to figure out where it was supposed to go

[@NathanielBTM]

well... I hope your handwriting has improved.

[@pahom2]

@@NathanielBTM he did it on purples

[@seronymus]

He only writes in DOOM (1993) quality graphics.

[@mumzieobiwan8407]

This was awesome...always wondered how things at the Post Office worked!

[@5-1biggiebagextrafries]

This is the nerdiest video I geeked out on because when Tom finally got it! I felt so proud🥹

[@Keenath]

The outward/inward thing totally makes sense to me: The outward section of the address (city/state/zip) is used for getting the mail from one distro center to another distro center; it's being read in the 'outbound' room of the site that collected the mail from wherever you dropped it of (or more realistically the nearest distribution hub, but whatever). They don't care about the street address yet, they're just trying to get the letter from its start point to the correct post office that serves the target zip code. The inward part of the address (street address) is the part that's important for getting from the local post office to your mailbox. It's used in the 'inbound' room of the site that's receiving mailbags from a truck and sorting it for local delivery.

[@JimGrisham]

“Outward” is also the term referring to the address on the outside of a mail sack (i.e. a bunch of mail heading to the same town), and ‘inward’ street addresses are only seen once you look at the actual envelopes inside the mail sack.

[@jgharston]

I was expecting Tom to say: Oh, yes, just like the UK system, SW1A is the outward part, 2AA is the inward part.

[@Stadtpark90]

Thanks.

[@wheedler]

I was thinking of it from the perspective of being in a conceptual space located in the middle of the address. The street address is more localized and inward, the city and state are the outward containing layer.

[@martinkeegan270]

I was also expecting Tom to know the UK system (SW1A being the outbound part). I had a job in the 1990s in speech recognition with particular reference to UK postcodes, and this came up a lot :)

[@RhyainnStone]

This is so cool! I’m a USPS rural carrier and I had no idea this place existed. It’s amazing how much work goes into getting the mail to us every day. Thank you for the video!!

[@franknord4826]

I'm not a USian, but thank you for your service anyhow. Emergency medical responders and postal deliveries are the only functions of government I can respect - and in my country the latter has been privatized decades ago.

[@jmullentech]

@@franknord4826 EMS here (US) is privatized by a large margin these days as well. Some are great, some are terrible haha

[@franknord4826]

@@jmullentech Right, the US is the place where poor people are scared of calling an ambulance, I almost forgot that. :( Still, thank you for your service, it's one of the most underappreciated jobs to do.

[@williamjenkins4913]

It really is amazing. One of the few actually functional government systems and there are politicians trying to destroy it our of spite.

[@iorilamia]

@@franknord4826 even normal people don’t call ambulances , it’s mostly saved for the incredibly wealthy

[@sickof36]

I swear I learn so much from your videos. Highly enjoy

[@jello4835]

I'm super glad there are people willing to do this important job because this looks like hell on earth to me

[@azraelle6232]

I used to do this job for nearly 10 years, at this location! Nice to see that microcosm get some exposure, it's a lot harder than it looks!

[@SilverFlame819]

Funny, I used to work there too, and I thought it was the simplest job I've ever had! :D

[@123457474869]

How was it? It looks like an awful job tbh. Did you enjoy it?

[@pawmeowzing2906]

how much do they get paid?

[@artimus7525]

I used to work there myself. Shortest job I ever had. I was one of many that couldn’t pass the training course.

[@joeg6419]

do you have an internal monologue/dialogue?

[@friend7120]

1:39 Tom walks up like a GTA character starting a mission

[@co2_os]

Fr 😂

[@cyanophage4351]

I really like that the keyboard has home row numbers. They actually thought about how to improve the terrible keyboard design of a default keyboard and made it more efficient

[@farmcat3198]

Ergonomic Engineers and Industrial Engineers are the ones who do the studies to develop those specialized keyboards. Working for the USPS as an Engineer was the most fascinating job I ever had. I worked on tons of interesting and complicated stuff. It was foolish of me to leave that job.

[@MayonnaiseVenusaur]

My favorite thing I learned in this video is that USPS commonly handles tetrahedral packages.

[@Brunosky_Inc]

Those pyramid computer cases have to get to their buyers somehow x)

[@star-army]

You can even mail a potato by putting an address label on it.

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

No, the package has four sides, meaning it's like a box without the top or the bottom. It's unclear why anyone would send this, as there's no way to put something inside of it.

[@Codebreakerblue]

Possibly a package that extends up and down to infinity? You could put something inside it by cutting a door in the side but I wouldn't expect it to fit in your mailbox, your porch, the delivery truck, the post office, or the observable universe

[@klondike3112]

@@Codebreakerblue The USPS would still deliver it

[@__-fm5qv]

As a Royal Mail Postie this was interesting! Here, at least at the depots I've been a part of, any mail that isn't sorted by the machine has to be hand sorted by employees at the depot itself. Similarly, if it doesn't scan into the mailing system correctly it has to be entered in by hand using the long number below the barcode, and if that doesn't work its added on-route as an adhoc delivery using the address.

[@StephenEden]

The UK has MDEC centers which does the same job. I worked in one.

[@__-fm5qv]

@@StephenEden Ooh interesting! I didn't know that I guess at the depot you probably can't tell if the ones rejected by the machine were also rejected by MDEC centres or not. But then again my current depot has such a low volume of stuff that everything is hand-sorted (pre-sorted before it gets to the depot make sure its our area, and then hand sorted to roads and streets).

[@j4ck3t]

As a mail machine operator in the Netherlands, I know we use the same machines( different revisions then in the UK ). The way it is explained in the video is exactly the same way it is done here, corrected for our zipcode system (we use 4 numbers and 2 letters + home number). But we off shored the labour overseas, where people read the letters and enter it in the system. It literarily has not changed in at least 20 years, the internet just made it possible for it to be done else where in a different country.

[@Nitches]

@@StephenEden Plymouth MDEC - stuff of nightmares

[@adambarker9493]

@@StephenEden I worked at the Plymouth MDEC typing addresses during Xmas and Summer breaks.

[@ShyanneMuna]

Absolutely love your videos!

[@ItsTheli]

I worked in the UK equivalent (MDEC, Manual Data Entry Centre) so this was cool to see how its processed similarly, although with mainly different hotkeys, but esentially the same

[@Killerean]

"Dude your hand writing is a REC!" :D I used to have a colleague, he absolutely hated hand writing, he'd write everything on his laptop. His hand writing was so terrible we nearly didn't get housed in one of the local military base housing units here in Czechia because he had to fill up a card. By hand. And the clerk at the desk won't help him. :D To be fair, I used to write terribly too. But I've got kinda conscious about that and re-learned hand writing at a certain point, making my own hand written font in the process.

[@tedchirvasiu]

:D

[@johntom8863]

:D

[@BaleszCraft]

:D

[@Whateverhasbeenmynameforyears]

Sometimes it is a language processing issue. I can not hold the sentence in my head and remember the letters of the words while remembering how to write the letters. So I either can write the sentence but it is going to look awful or I can make nice writing but do not remember what I am writing. So if I want it to look nice I have to write it twice so I do not have to remember what I am writing.

[@NoriMori1992]

Maybe he has dysgraphia.

[@JNCressey]

"We're not sleuths". Reminds me of "the Harry Potter envelope" story: Russian address got mojibaked (eg Россия turned into òÏÓÓÉÑ, etc) and it got written on the envelope like that - and the people in charge of mail decoded it and got it to the correct destination.

[@sheik124]

Decoding a mojibake address has to be the ultimate gigabrain postal service moment.

[@westtech001]

I figured that had to be unicode incorrectly transcribing (we've all seen it), but I've never heard that term for it before. 'The More You Know!'

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

They're not sleuths, they're wizards.

[@Kenionatus]

Nowadays, the OCR algorithms might even have enough training data to sort those automatically. (It's almost sad that the people who are keying in the address are slowly making their own job obsolete.)

[@honeytgb]

This was an eye opener. Loved it!

[@hitokage4]

Honestly, that was REALLY informative! I enjoyed that a lot!

[@NotParticularlyWitty]

Never seen someone so cheery when effectively discussing their own rapidly incoming obsolescence.

[@ursidae97]

Retirement

[@AidanS99]

It seems like his job will stay around since it’s the only one left. There always needs to be at least 1

[@mikefochtman7164]

In the 1990's I was involved in a small contract dealing with these REC machines and systems. Even then, some 30 years ago it was impressive how fast the machines processed each image. Imaged, OCR'd, either routed or diverted for human reading, then either returned in with route information or sent to slower reading, or 'dead lettered'. FYI, the machines print a bar-code strip on the front of the letter for further handling so the address only has to be 'read' once. Some commercial mail got discount pricing if they printed the proper bar-code strip ahead of time (I think that's what they called 'pre-sorted' mail)

[@svampebob007]

I've always seen those bar-codes on some of my mail, one day I got super curious about what exactly that was. it was so damn obvious if I though about what exactly I'm looking at, but I had to search far and deep (because I didn't know how to ask google).

[@MilnaAlen]

Actually the QR code seems to function as a postal stamp too, since one of the envelopes was missing the "Economy" text from the corner. Just a blank white envelope with a transparent plastic window, through which you can see the adress on the bill itself.

[@Stache987]

Look on the back of an envelope in yellow ink, another bar code provided by the post office equipment, probably the actual going to deliver to place vs what's on front. Did you know it's not a 9 digit zip code, it's actually got 12, 2 of the extra digits indicating which side of the building the mail is delivered to like E, N etc

[@baylinkdashyt]

USPS Postnet Barcode, yes. You can encode a 5-, 9-, or *11-digit* Delivery Point Barcode (I think the 11-digit version gets you to the actual mailbox/cluster).

[@tresmith5224]

Tom you deserve your own TV show or something you have such a cool style to your videos

[@shanesaw13]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane Tom. I worked at the Chula Vista REC in '98, '99. Even back then the writing was on the wall with how good the OCR readers were going to get, so I moved on before that REC was closed down.

[@CreditSolutionist]

I was at San Bernrdino. They closed our facility in Bout 05 or 06, I believe. I had so much fun at that job.

[@SithLord2064]

Wichita REC. We officially closed in '14, but immediately were retrained a Customer Care Agents for 800-ASK-USPS. Much preferred THAT job to the REC. Was also a bump in pay, as we were Level 7s compared to being Lvl 6 @ the REC.

[@julz7300]

2:28 i'd like to think that tom laughed like this simply because he said seamen

[@God_Yeeter]

It’s all fun and games until I send a letter with my Egyptian hieroglyph handwriting

[@jaclynschultz2616]

Wow! I worked at the REC in Tampa in the early 2000s. This brings back memories. I enjoyed the job….didn’t have to deal with people and I could listen to music.

[@zack4527]

Postage must be down in the summer because students aren’t mailing their flat Stanley’s