Wreck Center Part I

A few observations in regard to where I have worked for the last 6 months. Will add more as created...

Spokane, Wausau, Queens, Gary, Santa Ana, Portland, Mid-Hudson to name only a few…city after city I enter zip codes, inward addresses, business names, foreign countries, countries I’ve never heard of until they pop up on my screen and somehow correspond with my country list that I never have time to study. Letters to Santa, the White House, Any Elementary School USA and some merely addressed to say “Velma--Kentucky”. Some handwriting so shaky and scary it can only have been written by a small child or a very uneducated rural adult with Parkinson’s disease.

Some people think that they’re being creative with their artwork on the front of a letter. The only people mildly amused by it are the sender and possibly the recipient. Everyone in between it pisses off, including me--the guy who has to cross his eyes to make out the address amongst the insipid ivy drawings of the artist to get the letter to the boob they’re trying to impress. It’s a job.

For 8 straight hours I move from computer bank to computer bank covering different regions of the country whose mail has to get through. In cubicles barely wide enough to hold some of my co-workers who I know would never fit in a booth at a buffet, I log in and type. Picture a space roughly the size of a grocery store and fill it with these cubicles. There are approximately 1800-2000 employees.

Strategically placed on posts throughout the center are mega-jugs of hand sanitizer which have to be replaced often. When keying in heavily populated mail areas such as Los Angeles or New York, one has occasion to lay their hands up a keyboard that I can only compare to the teeth of a heavy meth smoker. Your fingers slide around on the keys. Disgusting. Germaphobes need not apply. Others are clackity, springy, new, have dead keys or are just worn out. I prefer clackity. I want some sort of return for my keystrokes. The desks are sectioned and have multiple adjustments. Crank up or down for the monitor section to full standing. The keyboard section has a spring-loaded foot pedal which releases it to move up or down and also has a crank knob to adjust tilt. I believe the standing up routine is only for those people 5’-8” or smaller or those without knees.

Until recently, an office chair was an office chair. I now beg to differ. There are wide ones and narrow ones and armless ones and arms that adjust up and down, in and out. Locked in or rocker. Adjustable “butt-angle” feature, etc.. Sometimes I see people leaning clear back the way kids drive their cars these days and wonder how they do it. I need to sit straight up when driving a car or a keyboard. Sometimes I come to a desk and wonder if the last keyer was Bilbo Baggins. We are given a 5 minute break every hour with a 10 minute break every two. 30 minutes for lunch after 4 hours.

Sometimes my fingers fly. Sometimes I drift or hit every imaginable wrong key. Sometimes I’m real proud of my speed if I hit 8,000 keystrokes per hour. Then they post the top keyers who have 20,000. Nothing makes me choke more than when I have some punk mentalist sit next to me and have what sounds like a playing card in bicycle spokes coming from the direction of his hands. I couldn’t pound keys that fast in gibberish. Makes me crazy. I make myself feel better by knowing that if it came down to REAL survival, he would be eaten first.