My work experience as an opener of mail in the United States

I used to arrive some minutes before seven in the morning. In the office of taxes, where I worked at that time, I could hear the sound of the machines to open mail, the operators used to start very early to put envelops in them before we arrive, so there were already material to work on.

I used to arrive to my desk, dropped my bag, put my coat on the back of the chair, and took my lunch to the fridge. On its door hanged a notice, something like "the only cases or bags allowed to stay in it from one day to the other were those with Insulin in it (...)".

Then I grabbed my tools to take off staples and to open mail manually. I used to arrive to one of the stations to open mail, grabbed a tub full of mail, and started to do it. I used to spend one, two, three hours, I took a break, I came back to open mail again. Then, one, two, and sometimes three more hours. 

When I began this job, I took this time as a moment of reflection. As the movements were repetitive It was easy to think in other things. In the first hour I got motivated with a song in my mind. I followed the melody in my shouted mouth and my awake brain. But by eight A.M. the music had gone and silence spread in the whole office, disturbed by any of the four supervisor to remind us how we must staple or batch the different types of forms to pay taxes.

So I was plenty of time to ramble. This organization to work got my attention. I tried to figure out how they designed the reception of taxes, analyzed and answered to tax payers. What I understood is that these works as a production chain, there is a lot of labor division. Open mail, scan forms and checks, validating money, update data from payers, and theses were some of the whole procedures. I'm sure that tons of physical forms in folders were also converted to digital format to ease the procedure of the analysts.

As I was saying, I used to ramble and soon Chaplin's movie came to my mind. The repetitive movements for a long period of time everyday make me obsessive with this memoir, and by all means, the scene where the body of the employee adopts the movement of the machine and so he loses control.

Pic from Chaplin's movie: Modern Times. You can watch a 1'47'' trailer of this scene in this link.

https://youtu.be/2B3HGY_zLKk 

Sometimes, although I was confident that I know 90% on how I had to staple a particular form, I asked to my supervisor abut it, just to speak something, just to hear something toward me. I also asked the wrong person for an information about a procedure for my payment and I was spelled with a bitter answer from a a grouchy woman.  But all of us are living something and many times that is hurting and we just don't want that anyone ask us foolish things.

What I missed from that job is that at least there were some English Language and the positive face of the quotidian acts of waking up early to go to a place called office.