You notice that a piece of mail has been caught in the automated equipment and is being repeatedly re-circulated rather than sorted. What should you do?

A piece that continuously recirculates without sorting indicates a sorting failure — the machine cannot process it. Continued re-circulation risks: damage to the mail piece (eventual shredding or jamming deeper); machine damage from repeated abnormal cycling; and increasing downstream backlog. The emergency stop procedure exists for exactly this situation. Remove the piece, assess whether it can be manually sorted, and notify maintenance of the jam cause.