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About two weeks ago the Postal Service upgraded their canceling machines to automatically scan addresses. I know this because my company's stupid 8.5x11" mailing envelopes have the return address in a funky, wrong place, and the new equipment reads our return address as the destination and mails everything back to us. So our fancy stationery has to be amended with blank labels and a stamp to put the address in the right place. Annoying, but that's what we get for being non-compliant.
But not everyone can readily cope with automation, and there's nothing in place to help that.
Last night when I got home I had mail. Not unusual. I have to shove the door open and the mail is on the floor inside the door and it's always a big mess getting home from work. i usually walk on things. I know, I'm an animal, I can't have nice things.
I then get into the kitchen, dump all my things on the floor, and forget about the mail until I have to leave the house again.
So last night I'm hustling out the door with my skate bag and there, on the floor, is an envelope. Christmas card. Addressed in large, childish handwriting that takes up the entire front of the envelope. Green marker.
MR. + MRS. GANDERLLS
[my house number and street name but St. not Ave]
LINDENHURST NY
1420
WTF?
I pick it up when I get home from practice and examine it more closely. The handwriting is not a child's, I realize, but that of a senior citizen whose fine motor skills have deteriorated. The back of the envelope is decorated with "Easter Seals 2005" stickers. The front has a return address label that kind of matches, and the return address is scratched out in the same green marker, though the name is left. The address is New Jersey. But the postmark is, "Coastal Carolina Area."
Further scrutiny yields that the odd 4-digit ZIP code was probably intended to have two 1s at the beginning, but the writer did not have enough motor control to move the marker properly, and so drew the two 1s on top of one another.
How it ended up in Buffalo, I don't know. There is a 14210, and a 14206, etc. all within the area, but they're not my Zip codes. And anyway, the word "Lindenhurst" was perfectly legible.
So, we looked it up on Google. Lindenhurst NY is on Long Island. [For those who don't know New York State, I just Google Mapped it and it's a 435-mile, 8-hour journey between Buffalo and Lindenhurst.]
We stuck the envelope in another envelope, enclosed a note explaining, and wrote the revised address, with the proper ZIP code (which contains none of the digits of the one the sender was trying to write, incidentally and puzzlingly), and will hope for the best.
I hope Mr. George P-- formerly of NJ-- has someone to help him with his daily affairs, because if his handwriting's deteriorated to this state, I shudder to think about his bookkeeping. And Mr. + Mrs. Ganderells, or whatever their name really is-- well, I hope they get their card.
And I hope we don't keep getting grossly wrong deliveries like that, because it's disconcerting at best and depressing at worst. I hope the Postal Service gets better software.
But not everyone can readily cope with automation, and there's nothing in place to help that.
Last night when I got home I had mail. Not unusual. I have to shove the door open and the mail is on the floor inside the door and it's always a big mess getting home from work. i usually walk on things. I know, I'm an animal, I can't have nice things.
I then get into the kitchen, dump all my things on the floor, and forget about the mail until I have to leave the house again.
So last night I'm hustling out the door with my skate bag and there, on the floor, is an envelope. Christmas card. Addressed in large, childish handwriting that takes up the entire front of the envelope. Green marker.
MR. + MRS. GANDERLLS
[my house number and street name but St. not Ave]
LINDENHURST NY
1420
WTF?
I pick it up when I get home from practice and examine it more closely. The handwriting is not a child's, I realize, but that of a senior citizen whose fine motor skills have deteriorated. The back of the envelope is decorated with "Easter Seals 2005" stickers. The front has a return address label that kind of matches, and the return address is scratched out in the same green marker, though the name is left. The address is New Jersey. But the postmark is, "Coastal Carolina Area."
Further scrutiny yields that the odd 4-digit ZIP code was probably intended to have two 1s at the beginning, but the writer did not have enough motor control to move the marker properly, and so drew the two 1s on top of one another.
How it ended up in Buffalo, I don't know. There is a 14210, and a 14206, etc. all within the area, but they're not my Zip codes. And anyway, the word "Lindenhurst" was perfectly legible.
So, we looked it up on Google. Lindenhurst NY is on Long Island. [For those who don't know New York State, I just Google Mapped it and it's a 435-mile, 8-hour journey between Buffalo and Lindenhurst.]
We stuck the envelope in another envelope, enclosed a note explaining, and wrote the revised address, with the proper ZIP code (which contains none of the digits of the one the sender was trying to write, incidentally and puzzlingly), and will hope for the best.
I hope Mr. George P-- formerly of NJ-- has someone to help him with his daily affairs, because if his handwriting's deteriorated to this state, I shudder to think about his bookkeeping. And Mr. + Mrs. Ganderells, or whatever their name really is-- well, I hope they get their card.
And I hope we don't keep getting grossly wrong deliveries like that, because it's disconcerting at best and depressing at worst. I hope the Postal Service gets better software.
