In 2006, during my senior year of college, I worked nights at the Postal Encoding Center in Beaumont, Texas. The starting pay was $15/hr and encoding is a 24/7 operation, making it a highly pursued job by college students.
It's true that every piece of mail goes through OCR. If that fails, it's sent off to one of the encoding centers as you described. There wasn't a 10 second limit to encode an address, but all encoder's performance was continually monitored and those that didn't perform quickly would not get as many hours per week. There were random audits done of a sample of 10 responses; over time your accuracy was expected to be 99%.
In addition to encoding scans of envelopes, there were more sophisticated systems for encoding packages and magazines. Since there is no standard place to put an address on a box or a magazine, encoders were provided with images from all sides of an item, making the encoding process have two steps: finding the address, encoding the address.
As OCR improved, the number of Postal Encoding Centers was reduced. The last I heard was that the Beaumont center shut down and there are only 5 left nationwide.
It's true that every piece of mail goes through OCR. If that fails, it's sent off to one of the encoding centers as you described. There wasn't a 10 second limit to encode an address, but all encoder's performance was continually monitored and those that didn't perform quickly would not get as many hours per week. There were random audits done of a sample of 10 responses; over time your accuracy was expected to be 99%.
In addition to encoding scans of envelopes, there were more sophisticated systems for encoding packages and magazines. Since there is no standard place to put an address on a box or a magazine, encoders were provided with images from all sides of an item, making the encoding process have two steps: finding the address, encoding the address.
As OCR improved, the number of Postal Encoding Centers was reduced. The last I heard was that the Beaumont center shut down and there are only 5 left nationwide.