Originally Posted by
BlkWhiteFilmPix
The Postal Service here relies heavily on the zip code, which the system scans.
Could it have gone to the wrong zip code and been returned from there? This has happened to me when I inadvertently wrote the wrong zip code on an envelope and dropped it in the mailbox.
The system does a scan, but hard to read scans are sent through to actual humans whose job it is to get a closest guess in the system to match.
If you ever use their self-serve package label machine, you can get an idea of how this works. When you type in the address it will search possible addresses to send it to and offer them as pop-up options. Someone is essentially sent images of the scanned letters and they have to workout the address and where it needs to get to approximately.
All that said, I pretty much never address letters or packages in cursive. There is a very good chance that it will end up in the hands of someone that never learned cursive and, if they did, may not have used it in decades either through not writing things down or simply using the tech that virtually everyone has at their fingertips.
Also, any given USPS mail center is only going to have a few managers (if even more than one). My dad was a manager for 5 years in a town of 65,000. He was the
only manager. He hated doing the job so much because of how time consuming it was, he went back to being a carrier.
USPS is not going to pay a manager to go out and spy on their workers or do ride-alongs when that worker makes less money than the manager.
Edit: Deb, it is likely that a worker couldn't read the address and simply didn't care enough to figure it out, so they send it back. USPS letter carriers, for all the love I have for them, are not always the brightest in the bunch.
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