Princeton Weekly Bulletin October 26, 1998
Busiest place on campus?
By Caroline Moseley
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John Coleman (l), mail services foreman, and assistant foreman Vester Mitchell sorting mail
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A total of 11 people handle the mail -- collecting, sorting and delivering; except for the foreman and assistant foreman, all are members of the Service Employees International Union. "We all pitch in and do everything," says John Coleman, mail services foreman.
Five vehicles go out in the morning to collect and deliver mail, he says. "There are four campus routes and pickups of the U.S. mail from the post offices at both Carnegie Center and Palmer Square." There is also an afternoon run to the U.S. post offices.
2.9 million pieces a year
The mail comes into the mail center in large plastic tubs. The staff sorts the mail into pigeon holes on the walls, individual mail slots arranged by department. Once sorted, the mail is taken out again for delivery. Student mail is sorted separately and taken to the student mailrooms in Little and Edwards halls. (The U.S. Postal Service delivers directly to the residential colleges but not to the dorms.)
Total annual incoming U.S. mail processed through Mail Services is 2.9 million pieces, according to Keith Sipple, who oversees Mail Services operations for the Office of the Treasurer. This figure represents 300,000 pieces of student letter mail and 900,000 pieces of administrative letter mail; there are also 500,000 student "flats" -- large manila envelopes, catalogs, flyers, journals -- and 1.2 million administrative flats.
Sipple points out that, busy as the mail center is, it still does not handle all University mail. "Printing and Mailing Services, which is separate from Mail Services, processes a significant amount of mail they prepare for University departments."
Total campus mail (as opposed to U.S. mail) handled by the mail center amounts to 1.6 million pieces: 500,000 in letter mail and 1.1 million flats. Mail Services also handles some incoming -- but no outgoing -- parcels, processing 75 to 100 per day.
More work in less time
Mail Services is a member of the Association of College and University Mail Services. Coleman says he finds the association a useful forum "for sharing mail service ideas and issues, and getting and offering suggestions." An idea he got from a colleague at another institution is "departmental metering cards. When a department sends down a bunch of mail to be metered" he explains, "they send the card with the appropriate information on it along with the mail, and we enter the charges directly from the card."
Coleman is "always looking for ways to do more work in less time," he says. He misses his years as a pick-up-and-delivery man, because "You meet all the people on campus. If you have a smile on your face, and you can say something that lets them have a smile on their face, you feel great." Still, as foreman of Mail Services, he says,
"I get satisfaction from knowing we're performing a much-needed service."
The only thing that makes him frown: "Sometimes people's handwriting is a little hard to read."