about 12 years ago I worked as a temp in a phone company's billing boiling room. This is how the part that I did worked, and some observations.

There are several different steps in the processing of payments. The big room that I was in was responsible for opening the envelopes and sorting their contents. This is done with the aid of a pretty neat machine that cuts the top and opens the envelope with suction cups. Photosensors could distinguish when the contents were taken from the envelope, and the envelope would be moved into the trash and the next envelope opened. At the station, we had several bins for checks, remittance documents, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't remember. The remittance document was put in front of the check, and periodically somebody would come and take them to a different big room where other stuff happened.


Nobody was an employee. Everybody was a temp. Many people were there on school breaks; others were permanent temps. So, nobody considered this a real job. One thing that I saw fairly frequently was people making their quotas by manually overriding the machine to quickly shuttle envelopes (including checks and remittance documents) through the machine and therefore into the trash. Since we were expected to have a certain number done per hour, this was a very fast way of making up quota after doing little to nothing for the previous 45 minutes or so. Supposedly the "supervisors" should have stopped this, but they also weren't really employees, and were probably making seven bucks an hour instead of six, and usually sat in their cubicle reading. Besides, the operators were expected to empty our own trash, and the bins got emptied into these huge recycling dumpsters, and everything was anonymous, so even if somebody examined the trash to find lots of checks in the trash, it would have been really difficult to prove who did it.

A slightly less outrageous example of check-dumping was when somebody put a lot of extra stuff in the envelope, and the operator didn't feel like sorting it out. It's faster to just dump the whole bunch in the trash and get on to the next envelope.

So, the idea of making the company go through the marketing nonsense is a nice one, but the "company" doesn't. This was at least true around 1992 in Naperville, Illinois for this one local monopoly that was there at the time. I can't imagine it's any different now. I have read of companies farming stuff like this just over the border to Mexico, since the shipping costs are more than recovered by the extremely low labor costs.

Some other bits:
Local monopoly's customers seemed very concerned with my soul. I got an awful lot of religious pamphlets.

Other customers went to great lenghts to affix the the check to the remittance document (you know, the thing that says, "Include with your payment. Do NOT affix the check to the document"). Much paperclipping and stapling. Some used tape, I never saw duct tape but I was only there a week and I'm sure had I been there longer I would have. Some folks even used glue. One person ran the check and the RD through the sewing machine.

Still other customers thought that I was a high-up decision maker and would write threats about how they would cancel if something did or didn't happen. Perhaps somebody in the next Big Room was a decision maker; I sure wasn't.

Never mail Christmas cards anywhere near Christmas. Probably five percent of the mail that we had was misdelivered Christmas cards. We were supposed to put misdelivered mail in a box. I always did, but many didn't...see next observation.

Never mail cash. Never ever ever ever. There was a big involved procedure for when somebody sent cash. It took about 10 minutes, and more like 20 if you couldn't find a supervisor (which was the norm). So, many found it expedient to pocket the cash, dump the envelope and RD in the trash, and immediately take the trash to one of the many huge anonymous recycling dumpsters. It was in fact foolproof--even if one of the other temps saw the act, and managed to find a supervisor, and report the incident, there was no proof.

I really like the idea of sending the pizza coupon to the bank that's soliciting me for YAN credit card though. If there's nothing in the envelope that's of value to me, because it's just bizness reply for some junk mail...I like this.

Reminds me of about a month ago when a pimply 15-year-old kid came to my door trying to sell me some of that citrus cleaner stuff. That works okay, but I have some stuff that I like better. I went and got that and pitched it to _him_, because it works better and is part of a system. He didn't quite know what to do with that, so he just mumbled incoherently and went to bother my neighbor (who I called and told her not to answer her door in the next 2 minutes or so).

I wonder what would happen if we all started pitching Amway to telemarketers?