Every item through the office is franked with the date and the machine's number, and the machine logs each impression, because the frank is what proves when a letter entered the system. One letter a night is logged and franked with the following day's date, at about two, and it is found in the intake cage before the first van has come in with anything.
I am the night shift manager at a sorting office, and the franking log is part of my handover.
How the machines work.
Mail comes in from the vans, goes through the intake, and is franked with the date and the machine's number and a sequence count, and the log records every impression against the date set on the machine. The date is set once, at the start of the night, by me, to the day the mail will be treated as posted, and it does not change until I change it.
Nothing is franked before it arrives, because nothing is in the building before the vans.
At about two in the morning, most nights, one impression is logged on machine 3 with the following day's date.
The machine's date is set to today. The log shows today on every impression before it and after it, and one impression, in the middle, with tomorrow, in the same sequence, with the same count.
And the letter is found. In the intake cage, before the first van, franked tomorrow, with today's mail not yet in the building.
The letter is real. A white envelope, hand addressed, second class, from an address in the town to an address in the town, and it has been through machine 3, because machine 3's frank is on it, in machine 3's ink, with tomorrow's date and a sequence number that machine 3 will reach, by its own count, at about six the next morning.
What has been checked.
The machine. Serviced, and the date mechanism, which is electronic, tested, and the machine replaced in 2022 with a new unit that did it in its first week.
The cage. Empty at midnight, on camera, and the letter in it at half past two, on camera, with nothing entering the cage between and nobody in the intake.
The letter. Opened, once, under the procedure for mail that cannot be delivered, which this can, so I should not have. A card, handwritten, from somebody to somebody, saying they were sorry and would see them tomorrow.
The addresses. Both real. Both in the town. I have delivered it, personally, every time, on the morning of the date on the frank, and the person at the address has taken it in and said nothing more than thank you.
The sender.
The sender's address is the same every night and the hand is the same hand. I looked it up, which I should not have, in the office's own records of undeliverable mail, and the sender's address has had a return to sender flag on it since 2011, for the reason the flag has, which is a death.
What is done about it.
The log has one impression a night with the wrong date, and the audit counts impressions against items and it balances, because there is one item, and the item was delivered, on the date it says, and the audit does not ask how.
I have told the day manager. She said the office had always had one, and that the last night manager had told her the same, and that it was not on any form.
What I do.
I run the night.
The one thing I have changed is that I do not put the letter in the delivery frame. I carry it myself, in my coat, and I walk it round before I go home, because the address is on my way, and I put it through the door by hand.
The reason is a morning in the spring when I put it in the frame, as I had done at first, for the walk to take, and the walk's postman came to me at six with it in his hand, and said he had found it in his bag, franked with the day's date, and that he had not put it there, and that the address on it was his.