F1 sends to belfast

the belfast sorting office is the only place in the uk where a non-adressee can legally open someone elses mail

this is where letters to santa come
if they dont have lapland written on the front

this is where letters to god arrive

letters where people write only the first name of someone and then put into a post box are all here too

letters where someone thinks vague directions to a shop opposite a campsite on the way into keighley from bradford are actually enough for the postal system to deliver to destination

all here in the belfast sorting office

F2 is for double-feeds
this is when the machine takes two pieces of mail into the scanner at the same time

they will have to be re-fed into the machine once they have been removed and seperated

F6 sends a task from domestic mail mode into foreign mail and vice versa

F7 is for freepost

but only freepost that doesnt have an adress on it
if it says freepost and it has an adress written after it
it must be processed the same way as all other mail

F8 sends to ROI

ROI stands for region of interest

in this case the region of interest is the address on the front of the envelope or package

the screen is split horizontally into two sections
the bottom half is the task to process
the top half is whats coming next

just so you realise this is never ending

F10 terminates the task

if an adress only has the street and postcode written on the front you have to press F10 after you key the postcode to make sure it doesnt come back to you asking for the city and area details

you can also use it when you just want to make sure you never have to see that particular piece of mail ever again

F12 is for BFPO

british forces post

your sat at a computer in a big room which is uniformally divided into row after row of people at computers

this is the stoke-on-trent MDEC

manual data entry centre

there are three of these in the country

this is where all the mail that cannot be read by the computer must be processed

computers are retarded therefore you have a never ending workload

when they photograph the mail they are even incapable of putting a red box around the address

this means that hundreds of tasks when they appear at your screen consist of a blank section of envelope

or the red box drawn around the stamp

the machines are incapable of being able to scan the mail sometimes
so when certain tasks arrive to your screen you are greeted with blackness

no address
no stamp

no defining characteristics

its simply black

the average MDEC keyer will process mail between 1,200 to 3,500 tasks per hour

you generally key at 2,300 tasks per hour

occasionally it peaks upto 2,500

those days when you can hardly keep your eyes open you still manage to autopilot 1,700 tasks per hour

in a 4 hour shift you will process roughly 9,500 tasks

you know you misprocess at least two tenths of these every shift

bad days could be 30% misprocessed

they test you and give you accuracy stats

these are put into charts along with the speed stats and plastered across the walls to invite some form of competition

those that key over 2,000 tasks per hour are highlighted with pale green pen

the top 5 in the room get blue highlighter

they test your accuracy by checking ten or twenty tasks that you processed the night before and check whether your keystrokes were the correct reaction to that piece of mail

most of the time your accuracy is 90%

you know it is nowhere near that

but when your mistakes are distributed over almost ten thousand tasks only the truly unlucky would have a reflective accuracy score

those that key over three thousand tasks per hour generally have a worse accuracy score

so with eighteen bays each with eight people to a computer over a four hour shift would process 1,368,000 tasks

but thats only one room in the centre

there are another 2 floors

each with two rooms like this

thats 864 people

over a 4 hour shift these 864 people will on average process 8,208,000 tasks

if only 10% are misprocessed this means eight hundred thousand pieces of mail are misdirected

either ending up at the wrong address or going to the belfast sorting office to be redirected and potentially be processed through another or the same MDEC

there is a lot more than just 10% of mail misprocessed

pieces of mail unable to be scanned properly would figure to at least 10% of the total amount of incoming tasks - these will all be sent to belfast

so on a good day you would be lucky if 70% of mail was processed correctly

making sure you write the name and adress in thick black marker helps

drawing cute love hearts with "i love emma 4va" on the envelope doesnt

picking out the envelope thats in that really pretty shade of pink because you think it reflects your oh-so-bubbley and kooky personality is not going to help

and FYI your not kooky at all
drawing circles above your i's instead of dotting them and being ditzy do not make you special
everyone can tell that bubbliness is put on

inside your really dying a slow death everyday

just like every soul sat in this MDEC keying away listening to the latest crap indie band predicting the same old shit guitar riffs and "i know she knows you know" lyrics that make you want to take a pneumatic drill to your ear drums

oh but they look so happy on their videos

well they wouldnt if they knew what wicked ways of toture i had in store for all of them

rohypnol all their drinks and string them up on meat hooks

and thats just for starters

you have a lot of time to think of novel ways of torturing someone when your staring at a computer screen for hours on end