
Some of the Letters Received in Postoffice
Would Baffle an Expert in Hieroglyphics
Neurotic Stenographers Create Queer Cryptics for Solution by Patient Postal Clerks.
If you were a postman and received a letter addressed "Double S. Nut Co., Minneapolis, Minn.," to whom would you undertake to deliver it?
This is not a catch question included in a Civil Service examination, but just a sample of more than 2,000 addressed envelopes received daily at the Minneapolis Postoffice that are so incorrect that at first glance it would seem impossible to find the person entitled to receive it. The above addressed envelope arrived at the Minneapolis office at 6 p.m. April 2 and was delivered by first carrier next morning to the W. S. Nott Company, Second Avenue and Third Street south.
Need of Egyptologist.
The ingenuity and patience of the mail distributers is tested to the limit hundreds of times every day in efforts to decipher hieroglyphics scrawled across the envelope or to work out a puzzle in the form of an address which in some very slight measure indicates that it is intended for some person or firm located somewhere in the city. When one stops to consider that more than 500,000 pieces of mail are received for delivery in this city every day in the year and that more than 10,0000 of that daily grist are improperly addressed, something of the enormity of the work of prompt and speedy delivery of mails is seen.
It Was a Stunner.
"That 'Double S. Nut' letter was a stunner," said W. C. Brown, assistant superintendent of delivery. "More than a dozen of the men who have been in the distributing department of years failed to get the phonetic import of that address. Evidently the address as the result of an inspired stenographer who had just graduated from some phonetic school.
"More than 10,000 incorrectly addressed letters are received every day. By that I mean letters that it takes time and work to determine who is intended by the writer. Such slight mistakes as wrong streets or house numbers are not considered in this estimate because the correct name can be given the proper address in a few minutes by the directory service department, but when the name is incorrect and even worse, when there is little resemblance between the address and any well known firm or person in the city, there is difficulty."