Who do you call when 84,000 bags are misprinted?

Do you remember Morning Song, the company that for a while produced wild bird food in the building just south of the Amtrak station that Rensselaer's gas utility now occupies? They consolidated operations in Reynolds. Recently they had a batch of bags that had the wrong address printed on them. I suspect that the misaddress was caused by an acquisition. In March 2014 a company in Seattle, Washington bought the bird food businesses of Scott, and Morning Song was one of those businesses.

What do you do when you have 84,000 misprinted bags? Morning Song contacted CDC Resources, which specializes in doing labor intensive, repetitive tasks. The people in the sheltered workshops in both Rensselaer and Monticello are happy for the work because work means a paycheck. I think pay is determined by a piece rate, so some of the workers earn considerably more than others.

Below you see the back of the bag with the address as printed and the labels with the correct address. The task is to take a label off its backing and neatly apply it over the wrong address.

Here is the finished product. Few people will ever notice the patch.

The finished bags are packed in large boxes for delivery back to the customer.

As I was watching the people at the Rensselaer center applying patches, I noticed two working together. One had what appears to be cerebral palsy or something similar. He did not have the manual dexterity to remove and then place the labels, so he was helping by smoothing them and making sure there were no air bubbles. He could do that part of the task and so he did. I thought it was wonderful that everyone could contribute in whatever way they could.

CDC Resources has not previously had work from Morning Song. It is expecting a new job from Donaldsons, for whom they have worked in the past. Here is an old post that looks at some other things they have done.

CDC Resources has recently redesigned their website at www.cdcresources.org.