Jobs that are perfect for dull men to perform are being taken over by machines. An article “Last of a Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses” in the New York Times reports on the closings of one of the two remaining centers where postal workers, called “Data Conversion Operators.” try to read addresses scribbled on envelopes and labels that machines can’t read.
A while back, there were 55 centers that did this. It is now down to two and soon will be only one.
That’s the bad news, that dull jobs are disappearing. The good news is the vastly improved reading ability of mail sorting equipment — but does that then mean there’s more bad news — that this is just one of many examples of dull jobs being replaced by machines?
[we’re researching now for examples of dull job being replaces by machines, and examples of dull jobs of running these machine — stay tuned, come back to this page from time to time to see how we’re coming along with this]
Thanks to Gloria Hernandez for informing us about this article — posting in on our Facebook Timeline.
I used to work in a REC Center in New York State. I started in 1995 and we closed it down in 2004, I have since been working at the main distribution facility. I still miss the camaraderie.