Conference 7.286::digital

   re .0
   >  
   >  I do NOT condone what the  Mill  Mailroom  is doing, but the cost of
   >  delivering MAIL to 3-4K employees has to  be staggering.  
     
   That is of no bearing on the matter. Mail persons are paid to deliver mail,
   not to decide what is and what isn't mail. IMHO, Trade rags are a crucial
   component of the information flow to the individuals in this corporation.
   
   I suggest that you pass the information in .0 to the Corporate  Mail
   systems Manager (NR02-2/C3) DTN 234 4459 and get a policy decision on
   this...
   
   
   q

    And when/if you DO get a policy decision on this, please post the
    results here, as then I've got about a dozen change of address cards
    that I need to fill out pronto...
    
    Jon

     Please understand that I posted .0 as "FYI".  I have NO intention of
     making a stink  about  this  to  DEC  Mgmt, as it does not effect me
     directly and I have more important "oxen to gore".
     
     There is only One  item  that  I requested to be mailed to my office
     and I have a call  in to them to change my mailing address (as I was
     getting the Product Safety Society Newsletter either on or after the
     date of the meetings).
     
     If  someone else wants to follow up  on  this,  be  my  guest...I've
     already  done  it  at two previous companies and  gotten  absolutely
     nowhere.  With the "down sizing" of DEC (ALL  but  one person in the
     MLO Mailroom took the buyout), I'm sure that the current response at
     DEC won't be any different.

     Good luck!

    I wonder if 'bulk mail' addressed to a Mr. Ken Olsen is meeting the
    same fate as the rest of the mail mentioned in .0 ?
    
    Lee

   I have just forwarded the contents of .0 to the corporate mail systems
   manager, who hopefully will enlighten us...
   
   q
   

I'll make a guess that the "corporate response" will be along the lines of
what's actually happening, i.e. DEC is not required to handle such mail
and that the Mail rooms aren't suppposed to be processing personal US Mail
(incoming anyway, they still seem to offer the service of taking properly
posted outgoing stuff).

I have no real objection with this policy. It's the company's right to do so.
I agree that it doesn't make much sense for mail room personnel to be making
business decisions which affect the ability of the rest of us to do our jobs
(like by trashing trade news which may critical for us to be aware of).

My real objection is that these policies or changes thereto "just happen"
without any advance warning. One day you're receiving Publishers Clearing
House sweepstakes entries and the next day the IEEE Journal is getting
thrown away and you're never the wiser. It would seem that if they can send
people around to personally put fliers on people's chairs to alert them to
a planned power shutdown or a library renovation, that they could give people
some warning that after such-and-such a date personal mail will no longer be
forwarded, rather than keeping it a secret.

-Jack

	... because now I won't get mail for the "Jack Cole" that worked
in the Mill years ago, is no longer with DEC, and who I hope isn't missing
all the catalogs and vendor mailings that I have been getting in Atlanta
for several years! :>)

>and that the Mail rooms aren't supposed to be processing personal US Mail

Since when are trade journals "personal"?

/john

   as I mentioned before, I have forwarded .0 to the Corporate Mail Manager. I
   have communicated with him in the past over other issues and found him to
   be a co-operative and concerened individual. At this point, I would wait
   for comment from him, and treat the actions described in .0 as a
   misinterpretation of guidelines. 
   
   As a large number of people in Digital actually have "being abreast of
   competitive advances etc in the industry" as part of their job
   requirements, I can't see this holding much water...
   
   q
   

   And I have just received mail from  the Corporate Mail Systems Manager, who
   agrees that the scenario in .0 is wrong, and assures me that it will be
   looked into.
   
   q
   

    This isn't a mail room issue...but
    
    I just noticed that next to the Cafeteria in MRO4 there is a large
    rack of flyers promoting things like Fuller Brush, Avon Products,
    Mary Kay, etc.  These look like that they are the same format so
    I'll venture that they are printed by Digital from a master provided
    by the outside company and then placed in individual racks by a
    Digital employee.
    
    On the one hand someone is tossing out mail that may be relevent
    Digital employees' work, on the other someone is reserving rack
    space and distributing business flyers that have nothing to do
    with Digital.
    
    May be the person that distributes this business junk stuff could
    help the mail room distribute more legitimate mail?
    
    

  As the manager of the Mail operation here at the Mill, I am  
concerned with the accuracy of the information contained in note 
(1142.0).

 First of all, any mail with a valid mail stop and addressee 
is delivered.  Whether it be first class or bulk.  

 Mail that is disposed of is limited to bulk rate mailing list 
generated items such as product solicitations, trade organization 
solicitations, trade magazines, solicitations for subscriptions, 
catalogues, and the like THAT DOES NOT CARRY A VALID MAIL STOP. 

 Mail without a mail stop, requires research to attain the proper 
address before we can deliver it.  A thousand extra "look ups" 
(our bulk rate daily average) is extremely labor intensive, especially 
on top of the incorrectly addressed first class mail. 

 If you have subscribed to a publication and your mail stop appears
on the item rest assured that we will deliver it.   Our role is one of 
business support, and we will do everything we can to assure that our
tenants receive the services they need to conduct their business.
 
                                        Thank you 
  

    > Mail that is disposed of is limited to bulk rate mailing list 
    > ...
    >solicitations, TRADE MAGAZINES, solicitations for subscriptions, 

    Are you aware that some of these "bulk rate mailing list" publications
    such as TRADE MAGAZINES actually cost us (or Digital) money?  That we
    actually SUBSCRIBE to these publications?  That "qualification" for a
    subscription depends on our job codes and functions?
    
    > Mail without a mail stop, requires research to attain the proper 
    >address before we can deliver it.  A thousand extra "look ups" 

    How about running off several hundred labels which state:
    
        +-----------------------------------+
    	| This mail was received without    |
    	| your mailstop.  Please advise the |
    	| publisher of your mailstop or     |
    	| further delivery will be ceased"  |
        +-----------------------------------+
    
    Then the several thousand lookups become two months worth (please allow
    two cycles to ensure that the publisher has had time to process the
    correction).  The worst thing to happen to a Digital employee is to
    have a customer stop you or call and say, "What's this I saw in
    _generic_trade_rag_ about so_and_so?" without us having a clue.  You
    may not think this would apply to one of you guys up north, but
    customers do talk to engineers occasionally and the competitive info is
    very useful as well.
    
    Please understand that just because it is bulk rate and happens to be
    missing the mailstop is not an absolute criteria for destruction.

How about a "dead letter office" at each site mailing room? Depending on
the site, perhaps the incorrect mail could be held there for as long as 
two weeks. If you think you are missing mail, you could go to the main mail
room and look through a few piles. That way, facilities doesn't have to do
a whole lot of work for incorrectly addressed mail, as proposed by -.1, and
it doesn't get tossed right away.

re: .15,

> How about a "dead letter office" at each site mailing room? Depending on
> the site, perhaps the incorrect mail could be held there for as long as 
> two weeks. If you think you are missing mail, you could go to the main mail
> room and look through a few piles. That way, facilities doesn't have to do
> a whole lot of work for incorrectly addressed mail, as proposed by -.1, and
> it doesn't get tossed right away.

	The PK03 mail room already has such a system (informally anyway),
    but it is also expanded to handle lost and unknown addressee mail as
    well.  The way it currently works is simple: if you are expecting mail
    that never seems to arrive, you go to the mail room and they let you
    look through what might be referred to as "MIA letter bins".  These
    bins currently contain a fairly even mix of trade magazines and generic
    "junk" mail (without correct mail stops), along with letters and packages
    which are either incorrectly labeled, or contain out-dated mail stops.

	I was recently awaiting some important mail and after awhile, I
    became convinced that the mail was simply lost in the mail room due to
    the fact that I had been shuttling between two different cubicals over
    the past few months.  I went to the mail room and was allowed to look
    through the MIA bins.  While I never found my mail, it turns out that
    the underlying feature of such a system was that I did happen to spot
    incorrectly addressed mail for five different people whose mail stops
    I happened to know.  Needless to say, these same five people later
    received hand-delivered mail that day (courtesy of moi).

	I should point out that this was my experience, and that these "MIA
    letter bins" might not ordinarily exist.  These bins also weren't very
    big (which made my search easier).  I would suggest that for larger
    amounts of MIA mail, that a rotating queue of MIA mail bins (based on
    the length of their MIA status) would be quite useful.  In other words,
    instead of having one ominous dumpster of mail (that nobody in their
    right mind is going to want to dig through), have a series of five or
    six trays where each tray is dated with a label showing when the tray
    was set aside.  This way, when a maximum MIA time is reached (i.e. a
    month or two), then the MIA mail from the oldest tray is discarded.

				    -davo

   There is a rather alarming  sideline effect from .13.
   
   I can have two (or more) basic addresses for incoming mail.
   
   Peter Quodling                         or Peter Quodling
   Senior Software Engineer                  Senior Software Engineer
   Digital Equipment Corporation             Mail Stop ZKO1-3/J35
   110 Spitbrook Road                        Digital Equipment Corporation
    Nashua, NH 03062                         110 Spitbrook Road
                                             Nashua, NH 03062
   
   Now most preprinted bulk mailing labels (at least on the half a dozen
   different magazines that I just checked, have sufficient space for 
   six or seven lines of information. The Mailer, typically uses the top two
   lines for their own codes, So the right hand example above, would overflow
   their label. Their data entry people, loading their mailing database, don't
   understand the significance of a Mail stop system, and would no doubt trash
   it, in deference to Job title (an equally easy way to find someone, based
   on what they do). I have absolutely no control over how a publisher
   produces their mailing labels, why should I be penalized.
   
   As suggested in a previous note, advising people that their mail is
   incorrectly addressed is a far more appropriate thing to do, at least then
   they can attempt to remedy the situation. 
   
   Irrespective of that, I think it is the mail rooms duty to attempt to
   deliver all mail. Arbitrarily trashing mail because it is too hard to look
   up someones mailstop in elf or a phone book, is a pretty poor excuse. How
   would we be if, Engineers trashed Computers because they couldn't seem to
   get them to work... Or the cafeteria threw out the food, that "didn't taste
   right", or the pay office trashed checks for people with "too many
   deductions".
   
   Cut us a break, and do the right thing for Digital.
   
   Peter Q.
   

    re .17 et al

    While peoplein NY have had complaints about outgoing mail not being sent
    out because of (incorrectly allegedly) being "personal", one thing I do
    have to say is that I get _all_ my mail, even mail that has a building
    address from 2 years/1 job/2 sites ago. (Digital picks up its mail at the
    post office.)

    If the problem is that it is difficult to deliver the mail, then the
    solution is to make the delivery easier. If every piece of incoming mail
    is not delivered, then someone is not doing their job. Either the mail
    room delivers mail, or it doesn't -- not delivering mail doesn't make it
    much of a mail room.

    How would the people in the mailroom like it of the post office trashed
    their personal mail -- letters, bills, catalogs -- just because someone
    didn't put a ZIP code on their home address?


    /Peters

Re .-1
  "                    Or the cafeteria threw out the food, that "didn't taste
   right", " 
                ^^^^^^^^
    Sorry Peter, but this one has merit here.
    
    				}8-)}
    
    					Bill
    

    
    Re .17, trashing the mail stop info:
    
    Just add the ms info to the street address line.
    
    		110 Spitbrook Rd  ZK01-2/J35
    
    
    
    As to the larger question: Given a bare-bones mail room staff, and the
    choice between getting all my mail late and not getting improperly
    addressed mail - guess where my vote goes!
    

I guess the  question  is, "What is the purpose of a mail room?" Is the purpose
to deliver mail?    Is  the purpose to deliver mail, cheaply?  

What do the mail rooms' customers have to  say?  This particular customer would
like his mail delivered.  If there is something  I can do to expedite that task
(such  as  making  sure  the  mailers  have my correct mail  stop),  I  welcome
suggestions.  

But I still want my mail delivered.
 
Seems to me that throwing out bulk mail because you do  not want to look up the
address is analogous to telling a customer that he needs to talk  to <whomever>
but  not  giving  him the number because you don't want to grab your  telephone
book and look it up.  No?

Then again, perhaps I have my priorities backwards.

Dave

I don't know for sure how the mailers' data entry folks react, but as a 
customer the first time I got something with a DEC mailstop appended to the 
address, I thought someone's printer had broken.

-dave

    re: "I'll look into this"
    
    Whenever anybody utters those words,you can be sure that the final
    answer will be that nothing is wrong.
    
    Ken

    
    Hey, let's see how many letters Ken gets delivered from now on...
    
    Seriously, why don't you cut the guy a break! He cared enough to
    respond here, why not give him a chance to do the right thing!
    

    The Account Payable group that was in this building moved next door
    some months ago. The vendors/suppliers are still sending mail to this
    address. Each day it is sorted out and then carried to the next
    building. What if people just trashed the the vendor mail?  
    
    There are also a large number of vendors that ship product to the
    BILL TO ADDRESS: instead of the SHIP TO ADDRESS:. Waht if we just
    trashed that product?
    
    HP

    
        Well we could "what if" this subject to death.   Many of the
    suggestions that came in have merit, and I will get together with the
    mail room folks and see if can work some of these ideas.  Thanks for
    your help.   We receive about 15 to 20k pieces of mail a day, much of
    which is incorrectly addressed.   Anything folks can do to get the
    proper mail stop on these articles will help, anything you can do to 
    reduce the volume will help.  (cancelling subscriptions you don't use,
    changing incorrect addresses etc.)  Please don't think that we dispose
    of everything incorrectly adressed, actually we look up about as many.
    I wish I could show everyone the type of stuff we're talking about
    here.   Most of it is obviously unsolicited.  A good example is when
    we received about 1,000 Victoria's Secrets Catologues, none with mail
    stops.  (boy, this one should bring some abuse)  Should we have looked
    all these folks up and got these catologues out ?  Do you think that
    1,000 folks at the mill all sent for these catologues on the same day.
    Bottom line is this would have taken us somewhere around 16 hours to 
    process.  We simply don't have these resources, and I couldn't support
    hiring folks to do this kind of work.  So I guess in a sense we rely
    on our mail people to use some discretion. If the article is not coming in
    by the hundreds, without mailstops, and it looks to be at all buisiness
    related, we will try to get it to you.  I almost wish that the senders
    would put no names on bulk deliveries, then we could send 10 to each
    mailstop and not have to deal with look ups or folks complaining about
    getting articles for folks who they don't know.   The last thing we
    want to do is not deliver an item of value to you.  I'm open to
    suggestions, and sure to hear criticisms, I will work all the
    suggestions to the best of my ability.   Please excuse any typo's 
    I'm short on time and leaving for vacation, but wanted to
    respond before I left.  I'll check in on this note upon my return. 
    
                                            Thanks, 
                    

I personally have NEVER had problems with trade magazines being unable to put
the mailstop on an address.  Mailstops are in common use at many corporations
and so the mailing label generation software at the trade rags is set up to
handle them.

--PSW

re: 1142.1
     
>   That is of no bearing on the matter. Mail persons are paid to deliver mail,
>   not to decide what is and what isn't mail. IMHO, Trade rags are a crucial
>   component of the information flow to the individuals in this corporation.


Correct.

However, I do use a PO Box for everything other than coresspondence chess and
letters from relatives, which go to my residence.

Periodically, I do get stuff at DEC, but very little.

re: 1142.17

There is no reason to put such a title in an address as it has nothing to do 
with the delivery of the mail.   

Re .29:

>There is no reason to put such a title in an address as it has nothing to do 
>with the delivery of the mail.   

What are you telling him for?  Trade rags with free subscriptions demand that
you provide the title to get the magazine; they put the title on the mailing
label by themselves.
				/AHM

   Yup, and with some of them, their "free" subscriptions are only for select
   types of employees, so that if you tell them, you are a SW Eng, they ignore
   you. If you tell them, you are a product manager, bingo....
   
   q