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Where I work, one of our clients sends us letters in PDF format (2500-3000 per day). Our jobs are to print, sort, label & ship these letters to the recipient. Several months ago, I noticed in a large number of the letters I was sorting, the woman recipients were named Angel, Angela, and Angelica…etc. I made note of this to a co-worker, and he kept an eye out to see if he had any similar names, which he did. For the rest of the day, we found an inordinate number of “Angel” based names, as well as the word Church showing up in a lot of addresses, as well as one person whose last name began with God.
Since then too many instances have occurred to be considered “coincidental”, such as:
1. It started pouring down rain one day. A while later, I asked my co-worker Ted if it was letting up. He looked outside, and said it looked like the rain was stopping. As he sorted a few more letters, one of the addresses he came across was Genital Rain Ave.
2. One of our favorite topics of discussion is movies. We were talking about our favorite Mel Brooks films, and I said how much I like Blazing Saddles. A few letters later I had an address on Rock Ridge Road. I had also remarked to Ted (who just happens to be half my age) that Gene Wilder had been married to Gilda Radner of the original cast of SNL. Sure enough, a few letters later, the wife’s first name – Gilda.
3. In the process of sorting & labeling, we have added a step in which someone quality checks each letter and label to make sure the information matches. On the letters the person’s full name is spelled out, but the label only has a certain amount of space and if the name is long or hyphenated, sometimes the letters in the name get cut off. A new person asked if it was OK that the label didn’t have the full spelling of the name, and I said as long as the rest of the information was correct, it was OK. On the very next letter in my pile, the last letter of the last name was missing. Big deal? Well when you consider they live on Cut Off Way, I’d say yes.
And the instances aren’t limited to these letters, it seems to be any printed page laying on the table. In the morning, I print out the daily crossword puzzle to work on during lunch. As I’m sorting letters, I glance at the clues to see what’s in store for me in the puzzle.
1. One day I noticed a clue asking about an actress in the movie Grease. A few minutes later, someone from another area came over to me and said “for some odd reason, I’ve had songs from the soundtrack from Grease running through my head today”.
2. I was in our kitchenette area and overheard a conversation by two people in which the woman was explain that “no matter what, I couldn’t get my car to start. I finally had to have it towed to the dealer, and they replaced the battery”. One of the answers in the puzzle? Car Battery.
3. One clue asked the name of the band Chaka Khan sang for. I’m usually pretty good at music trivia, but I was drawing a blank. I asked another co-worker, and she said Rufus. A few letters later – you guessed it, the man’s first name was Rufus.
There have been other instances, but you get the idea. It’s happened often enough for us to really wonder what’s going on. These letters come in one lump chunk of letters, and we don’t see the files or letters before they’re printed, but only as we sort them. And because of the timing of events, it’s not like we see the name/word and then try to link it to part of the conversation. We bring up a topic at random, just like any conversation. I’ve been involved in receiving, printing and mailing letters for the better part of 12 years, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen the names Gilda and Rufus. So my Sci-Fi minded friends…what gives? Any theories or ideas? I’m always the one looking for a reasonable explanation to odd things, but this has me at a loss.
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History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of man
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