The mailroom has had to adjust to an influx of packages from Amazon in recent years. Photo by Renee Jiang/The Choate News
To Mr. Peter Dupont, the most significant trend during his time as Choate’s mailroom supervisor has been a drastic increase in the number of packages received from e-commerce sites. “When I started here, we were receiving around 70 packages per day. Now, we get around 350, mostly from Amazon. We’ve passed 500 packages in a day eight times since September. Some faculty have gotten over 400 packages since the start of the school year because that’s just how they do all their shopping,” Mr. Dupont said. Indeed, the online shopping market has grown exponentially in the last decade. According to a study by Internet Retailer, e-commerce sales have gone from being just 5.1% of all retail sales in 2007 to 14.3 percent in 2018.
Though the mailroom is a place that Choate students and faculty frequent on a regular basis, many are not fully aware of the process behind the arrival and organization of their Amazon packages or parcels from family.
A group of three Choate staff, Mr. Dupont, Ms. Sarah Case, and Mr. Nermin Duracak, make everything possible.
Incoming mail from outside shipping carriers such as the United States Postal Service (USPS) or United Parcel Service (UPS) to the mailroom is first separated by category of recipient: faculty or student. The mail is then divided according to shape. Both types of mail are then sorted alphabetically by last name.
The mailboxes are in alphabetical order like the sorted mail, which expedites the delivery process by eliminating the need for staff to constantly move back and forth across the mailroom.
On the other hand, larger packages are scanned into a computer program that automatically identifies the recipient of the package and sends an email to their Choate account, notifying them to pick up their mail. The box is then marked on the outside with the recipient’s name and shelved according to last name.
With the opening of St. John Hall in 2017, the previous Student Activities Center was vacated, including the old mailroom that was located in the basement. Mr. Dupont, who supervises of the mailroom, has worked there since 2009 and is grateful for the change in location. Mr. Dupont believes that, overall, the new space makes the jobs of the mailroom staff much simpler.
“The old mailroom was terrible. The mailboxes were only three by four inches long, preventing us from fitting mail inside, and the locks were finicky and always broken. The only downfall I can see to the new setup is that bigger mailboxes mean that the room is bigger, so it takes more time to walk around and deliver the mail,” Mr. Dupont said.
Despite the drastic increase in packages, Mr. Dupont has not noticed a considerable change in mailbox usage during his time working in the mailroom. He theorizes that this is because when he started, email and text messaging were already well-established methods of communication. Overall, Mr. Dupont estimates that only around 1% of students regularly receive personal mail in their mailboxes.
A service in the mailroom that Mr. Dupont wishes was more used among students is the lost-and-found. He said, “I can tell students aren’t aware of the lost-and-found because some of the things in there are expensive. We get a lot of coats, sweatshirts, phone chargers, and earbuds. By the end of the year, it’s always packed.” At the end of spring term, the contents of the lost-and-found are displayed in St. John Hall, and what is not claimed is donated. The lost-and-found is open whenever the mailroom is open.
