The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Chronicle Staff If you are like most Canadians, you‘ve at least one time in your life asked why a letter has taken so long to reach its destination. Being only human, we are quick to point accusing fingers at Canada Post, the Crown Corporation that handles the mail of 23,000,000 Canadians. Sometimes, they are at fault, as they readily admit, but Canada Post officials claim that many problems are initiated even before the letter enters the mailbox. The vast majority of thgrmailing mistakes centre around the postal code, that sixâ€"character figure that Canadians are so reluctant to use. And even when they do, they often do so incorrectly. ‘"‘There are usually very few problems if the correct m&ll code is on the envelope. Even if the person has gotten to include what city the letter is going to, we can usually get it there without delay," said Paul Rostic, Customer Services Manager at the Trillium Drive Processing plant in Kitchener. "A lot of people don‘t understand postal coqé:c‘\Actually all they are is a short form for your address." , The first three characters in the code, a number surrounded by two letters, indicates the general area of the destination. In the case of a postal code with an NZE preface, the N stands for southern Ontario, the 2 identifies Kitchenerâ€"Waterloo and the E breaks it into a particular area of the city. _ The final three characters, two numbers with a letter sandwiched between, get into the specifics of the destination. An explanation of how a letter sent to Gueiph from Waterioo ends up in Vancouver could be quite simple. A sloppy handwriter may make the first N in the code to resemble a V, the first letter in the British Columbia code. If this should happen, the letter‘s 20 mile trip may end up being a 5,000 mile journey. It is also important to make sure the postal code is at the bottom of the letter, at least threeâ€"quarters of an inch up, so there is still sufficient space for the operators at the code punching stage to put coded bars at the bottom of the letter. That‘s the first step in getting your letter on its way to its proper destination. Two types The next stage of the mailing process is the insertion of the envelope into the mailbox. From that point on, the majority of Canadians have little idea what goes Two types of mail arrive daily at the Trillium plant. The first arrives at the high dock. This is all the mail from outside Kâ€"W and all that is to be sent out of town _ All trucks involved in this process are private contractors who are linked with a Canada Post computer that keeps constant surveillance on their The second type arrives at the low dock in the familiar red, white and blue trucks of Canada Post. The same trucks go out in the morning loaded with mail and parcels for local delivery. The dock is checked every half hour throughout the day to make sure the flow of mail is steady. After the incoming mail is placed on a conveyor belt it is ready for the next stage. Parcels are sent via a different _ Sometimes, especially in the winter, the mail is foreed to spend an extra length of time at the dock because it may be wet or damaged. Rostic said it is common in the winter months for children to g: snow in mailboxes and affect the process. Letters are now at the culling stage of the process. In this aperation, employees take out of the hcomi& letter stream anything which is not a standard s letter. This includes over and undersize envelopes, 6 H !‘ li 1 4 A worker at the Canada Post Trillium plant in Kitchener is busy at the group desk suite. At this location, letters are manually bar coded for the letter sorting machine to read. Mark Bryson photo Handiled manually small parcels and bundles of letters. Unless the letter can be handled further by machine, they are handled manually, and thus take a longer time to process. _ Letters are then ready for the cullerâ€"facerâ€"canceller process. Fine culling is a more thorough check of the letters to make sure they can be handled by machines. Bent, oversize, undersize, or letters containing metal which may damage other mail are all dumped into a bin and sent for manual sorting. If they pass the inspection, letters are turned over so the stamp side is facing the scanning heads which check for sufficient postage. Each stamp has a fluorescent bar on it that is read by the machine. Metered postage also has fluorescent ink which is located by the scanning heads. If the postage is insufficient it is rejected. It is quite easy to sit back and say the postal service makes mistakes, but a small sampling of rejected mail shows what workers must deal with on a daily basis. In one pile of rejected letters sitting at the Trillium plant recently, there were letters with incorrect postal codes, no stamps, reâ€"used stamps, and even a 2¢ stamp. It gets worse. There were several window envelopes with indiscernable addresses, interâ€"office mail and even a Gerber baby food coupon simply filled out and dropped in a mail box. y "Sometimes it gets a little frustrating,"‘ said Rostic. *"*Believe it or not, we‘d like to see an end put to window envelopes. You never know where the address is going responsible for sorting turnaround mail. This is mail that is incorrectly given to the wrong carrier. She reads the address and puts it in the proper sict, somethiing that requires a thorough knowledge of the city. Canada Post doesn‘t claim to be perfect, but many foulâ€"ups we could help avoid Let‘s walk a mile in their shoes Can be frustrating to turn up, People might understand why things get delayed if they saw what comes through here. All we can do here is provide the best service for the best price possible. Proper mailing is a big help." For the next step, letters move to the optical character reader. This machine is capable of reading typed or machinge written postal codes. It prints the information read as a pink bar code on the lower right corner of the envelope and sorts the letter into one of 14 computer programs. Handâ€"written postal codes are punched in by operators who can handle anywhere between 3,000 to 4,000 per hour at 99 per cent accuracy, according to Rostic. The next step is totally mechanized. An electronic eye, capable of reading 20,000 bar coded letters per hour, sorts the letters into one of 288 destination bins on each of the 14 programs. The letters are then collected from the slots and put in a box for their final destination or a letter carrier‘s route. In the case of mail destined for Waterloo, it leaves Trillium at 6 a.m., to be picked up by Waterloo letter . carriers at 6: 45. The carrier‘s task is to sort the mail into the order the route wifl be done. Parcels for Waterloo delivery are handled directly from Trillium by drivers who specifically serve the city. The fact that a letter mailed from Waterloo to Waterioo is first routed to Kitchener, does not slow down the mailing process, says Rostic. **Waterloo residents receive the same efficiency as a Kitchener person would. The Waterloo mail arrives at the same time and leaves at the same time as Kitchener. In either city it doesn‘t matter whether you are mailing across town or across the street, it comes here first," said Rostic. "If Waterloo handled all their own mail it would probably take longer." In all, Rostic estimates the Trillium processing plant handles 300,000 pieces of mail daily. While Canada Post seems to feel they are doing the best job possible, their constant revenue loss has forced them to delve into other fields. They are now heavily into advertising mail. Rostic said the benefit of this to an advertiser is that Canada Post can ensure that only areas where the advertisers want to advertise are serviced, something other mediums cannot say. Priority Post is another venture of Canada Post. Operated the same as any courier company, Rostic feels their rates are competitive. Electronic mail is another relatively new function of the post office. A coâ€"operative venture with CNCP communications, this function has virtually replaced the telegraph.â€" The latest and most technologically advanced undertaking is Intel Post. Satellite messages are being sent across the globe at a price couriers can‘t touch. The process is capable of sending photocopies across the ocean in a matter of minutes. While we are all well aware of some of the "horror stories‘ that w::uy come out of Canada Post, we aeldol::heara the horror stories that the workers must face. According to Rostic, the average Canadian would be surprised at some of the things put through the mail and perhaps appreciate the service a little more. **You are going to have the odd problem no matter Whether you agree with his statement or not, it might be a nice gesture to say hello to your letter carrier next time you see him walking through a thunderstorm or three feet of snow to deliver your mail. you send things with. All we can do is our best," Sorts to programs No slowdown Y, JINE 19, 1986 â€"