Holy 10-key, Batman!

Last night I had the pleasure of working a 14-hour day, the final 8 of which occurred from 6pm-2am in our basement. Housed there is our Document Processing area which handles all check postings and remittance. As you can imagine, the volume of checks and cash that flow through there requires a secured area, and unless you work there you only get one opportunity to visit/view the site once every three years during their Open House.

Except for me.

We're looking at taking over some of their call volume to allow their staff to focus even further on the processing of work, so I received an extremely rare all-access security dispensation to view all the processes and equipment. Man, were my eyes opened!

The first thing I see are our operators encoding the checks. I thought I'd seen some folks 10-key their check bundles pretty fast in the branches. Nope. These girls were running at 13k-15k keystrokes PER MINUTE with less than 1% error rate! There fingers were literally moving so fast I could barely see them. And while they're encoding the checks they're also checking for signatures, legal line/courtesy box match-up, valid date, etc. The speed at which these ladies were processing checks (and catching errors, mind you) is absolutely mind-blowing. If I had to move my fingers and hands that fast for hours upon end I think they'd curl up into a fist and die. Or turn to rubber.

Then there's the sorters - a single one of which costs as much as multiple houses - that were almost silly to watch. It reminded me of that scene in MIB 2 when Will Smith went to pick up Tommy Lee Jones from the post office and when they opened up the machine there was a multi-armed alien in there. They, too, move at a speed that makes race drivers supremely envious.

Not everything about the visit or the department is glorious...there are definitely parts that were a drag, just like most any job that people have. But it ended great! Their flooring is tile and it's waxed three times a week. Waxed tile plus new rolling chairs = much fun! Combine that with standard cubicle office equipment and dart guns, and you've got yourself an urban office non-destructive paintball fest! :-)