Behind the Scenes at BU’s Mail Services
Neither wind nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night deters this dedicated staff
Each morning the loading docks at BU Mail Services offices at 120 Ashford Street are bustling with activity by 7:30 am as US Postal Service trucks drop off thousands of pieces of mail for BU departments and offices and faculty and staff. Over the next two and a half hours, a dedicated team of Mail Services employees works to get it all sorted by department and route and loaded onto trucks for delivery to the University’s three campuses—Charles River, Fenway, and Medical.
How much mail are we talking about? Last year alone, Mail Services processed and delivered 1,957,954 pieces of mail, including packages. That’s an average of 37,653 items each week. And that’s just the mail necessary to keep the University running smoothly. (Residential mail for students living in BU housing is delivered by the US Postal Service and distributed by BU Housing ).
Then there’s all the interdepartmental mail and outgoing mail that has to be picked up and brought back to Mail Services for sorting and postage before the USPS returns to pick it up at 4:30 pm.
“People don’t realize the amount of work that goes into processing mail,” says longtime Mail Services employee Brian M. Costa. “Every day we sort thousands and thousands of pieces of mail, and we’re blessed to have such good people working here. I love coming here and I love doing my job, and I love the feeling that I did a good job by the end of the day.”
Bill Politis can be reached at bpolitis@bu.edu.
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