Howcast

Postal Penmanship

Ever have trouble reading your own chicken scratch? Imagine how postal service workers must feel. While the addresses on most envelopes these days are machine-read, the only way to read truly messy handwriting is to send it to an actual person. At the U.S. Postal Service’s “Remote Encoding Center,” 1,900 clerks are responsible for deciphering the nation’s most illegible handwriting.
 
While these master “code breakers” may be “the last vestige of human intelligence versus machine intelligence in the sorting race,” we’re pretty sure they wouldn’t mind if you made their lives easier and neatened up your handwriting.
 
source: online.wsj.com
image via Flickr: “you’ve got mail” by wheat_in_your_hair