Purging the Scourge of Snail Mail
I was at my desk sorting through mail—the kind now known as “snail mail”—and getting more agitated with every piece I opened. America’s best known children’s hospital had just sent me another unsolicited sheet of return-address labels with cutesy, cuddly animals on them. I counted 60 labels—more than the number of mailings I’ve made in the last year. So, what am I supposed to do with the unused stickums they sent me six months ago or the ones from last Christmas and the Christmas before? And am I ethically obliged to send a contribution if I choose to adhere one to an envelope?
I put down the stickers and turned to a much heavier piece of mail from a wildlife preservation organization. A few weeks ago, the group had sent me a large stack of poorly printed photographs of seals and otters and polar bears. Maybe my four-year-old great-nephew Brayden would enjoy them, I thought, and tossed them into a pile of unsorted paperwork that I accumulate for several months and then throw away. This time the conservationist group had mailed me a gigantic 24-panel map of the United States; how many trees were toppled to print tens of thousands of these, I wondered. The map is suitable for my glove compartment except that it shows only interstate highways and major cities—not more idyllic routes or important communities like my hometown in Florida or Rehoboth Beach. GPS this map is not. But perhaps my first-grader great-nephew Ben or his kindergartner brother William would like it, so into the stack of to-be-reviewed-later papers it went.
Everything else in my mailbox that day (as most days) was immediately discarded. That included sales pitches from two auto insurance companies, each specifically vowing that its rates are lower than the other’s. Then there was the invitation to an investment seminar which would show me how to live comfortably in retirement—in a cardboard box, I reckoned. Also trashed was a congratulatory notice from a local car dealership that I had been selected to win $1,000 or (in tiny type) a discount oil change. All I had to do was stop by the showroom with my paper key to the treasure box.
Why do I waste my time walking to the mailbox anymore? The Postal Service realizes that most of us hate getting so much “direct” or “junk” mail, but they say it’s the only way they can cover costs to deliver the important stuff we really want and need. Hmmm. When was the last time I received anything truly meaningful via what was once fondly known as the U.S. Mail? All personal correspondence and even social invitations are accomplished via the internet. I still get an occasional bill in my physical mailbox, but only one small company I do business with is not yet set up for online payments.
Just as I was thinking it might be time for the venerable old Post Office to declare that it’s been a great 236-year run but its work here is done, I was distracted by a live story airing on CNN: The Postal Service is on the verge of bankruptcy, and the Postmaster General is begging Congress for help. Great time to ask Congress for anything, I muttered.
Without huge cutbacks in staff and locations and the end of Saturday delivery, the Postal Service will probably collapse within a year, the official said somberly. A better idea might be to deliver only on Saturdays, preferably before my neighborhood’s recycling truck arrives.
I know I may sound a bit mean-spirited here. The country needs jobs, and the Post Office is America’s second largest employer, just behind Wal-Mart (but with better benefits). Still, as with the lamented passing of physical bookstores, old business models are rapidly falling aside in our digital age. Thus far the Postal Service has not found a way to reinvent itself, as pieces of mail delivered have plummeted 22 percent in the last five years and continue to drop fast. Even the relatively popular (and pricey) advent of Priority Mail fixed-rate packaging has proven problematic. As one friend mentioned when informed that the Post Office may go under, “Where will I get all my free Christmas gift boxes?”
It may not happen within the next 12 months but when the federal postal system ultimately shuts down, American life will go on with only minor inconvenience. Private parcel companies will do very well, and new ones will likely spring up to spur price competition. (That statement may sound funny coming from a firm believer in many government social services, but mail delivery in the 21st century is hardly a priority concern.) Direct mailers will increasingly turn to the internet, which means that our favorite websites and electronic mailboxes will become even more cluttered with ads and spam messages. But at least web junk doesn’t destroy forests or wind up in landfills—and it can be better targeted to consumers who may find it of interest.
As for trees, without physical junk mail we might actually have too many of them one day. The demand for wood-based paper to print direct mail will drop dramatically, following the lead of books, newspapers and magazines which are already well on the road to digital dominance. What will we need paper for? Even most furniture is no longer made of pure wood—rather it’s a particleboard concoction often involving sawdust, lumber scraps, straw, sugarcane and (too often) formaldehyde.
The one thing I will truly miss when my postal carrier drives off for the last time is my physical magazine subscriptions. As CAMP Rehoboth’s Steve Elkins knows only too well, I am not a happy CAMPer if I don’t receive a hard copy of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. Yes, I can read all the features and even look through the pictures online (and I urge friends all over the globe to do so). But I am old school. (Or, is that just old?) I prefer to hold a magazine (book or newspaper) in my hands. Heck, I even like to read the ads in Letters. They’re much more interesting than most of the off-target solicitations littering my outmoded snail-box.
Bill Sievert’s comic mystery novel “Sawdust Confessions” is available in hard-copy format only from online bookstores. Contact Bill Sievert