SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – If your handwriting is too messy, or maybe you get the ZIP code wrong, what happens to your package as you mail it across the state or the country?

There’s one solution for it across the entire nation, and it’s in Salt Lake City.

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The USPS Remote Encoding Center, or REC, looks and sounds like a regular office building, but you could call the workers Santa’s elves. They work with mail that goes all over the country, even some places around the world.

“I like seeing the little mail that says, ‘To: Santa,’” data conversion operator Debbie White said. “It’s fun to know that you’re a part of the process of Santa‘s little elves.”

Data conversion operators like White work to decipher your messy handwriting or incorrect addresses.

“They decipher the mail,” Senior Manager Barbara Batin said. “They look at it and decide they can read it better than that machine can, and we can get that result on that mailpiece and put a barcode on it and get it to that final destination.”

The REC in SLC opened in 1994 and was the first Remote Encoding Center in the United States. Now, they’re the only center still standing and responsible for all mislabeled mail across the country.

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On average, data conversion operators decipher about 1,000 pictures every hour, and go through one picture every 90 seconds. This time of year workers say they get especially busy, but say they enjoy the work.

“I love it,” Batin said. “This is the best place in the whole postal service to work.”

Operators say they come across some interesting mail, like fan mail.

“I think the celebrity male is probably my favorite kind,” Data Conversion Operator Christopher Kenney said. “Oprah is by far the most I see.”

The REC is open 24/7, 365 days of year. So, in proper Santa’s workshop fashion, they say they’ll be open on Christmas.

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