I used to do this when I worked for the post office (not in the US) and it was by far the dullest thing I have ever done. Truly loathsome work. It was referred to as "coding".
There were rules in place so you could only do it for 20 minutes at a stretch and only a couple of times (three?) per shift. Presumably this had to do with the fact that the quality - which was a problem - would collapse otherwise. You needed to keep a low average time per letter or you would get booted off coding duties. I can't remember exactly how long, but you needed to be able to code a letter in a matter of seconds.
The American setup looks a lot more hardcore (six screens?!) than the one I used though. Pretty sure the application was written in Visual Basic.
The machines which sort mail are pretty bad-ass. Not only can they sort by postcode, but also by address so the mail comes out in the order in which the mailman visits each building on his route.
There were rules in place so you could only do it for 20 minutes at a stretch and only a couple of times (three?) per shift. Presumably this had to do with the fact that the quality - which was a problem - would collapse otherwise. You needed to keep a low average time per letter or you would get booted off coding duties. I can't remember exactly how long, but you needed to be able to code a letter in a matter of seconds.
The American setup looks a lot more hardcore (six screens?!) than the one I used though. Pretty sure the application was written in Visual Basic.
The machines which sort mail are pretty bad-ass. Not only can they sort by postcode, but also by address so the mail comes out in the order in which the mailman visits each building on his route.