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The U.S. Postal Service
Mar. 31st, 2011 10:13 amI had to run a quick errand this morning after dropping my younger daughter off at school and before going to work: I stopped in at our insurance agent's office to register an Electronic Funds Form, authorizing us to pay them online. Quaint, I realize, but some bureaucracies are slower than others.
These are good agents, who helped us wend our way thru the various forms when we had a water pipe freeze and burst. But we had been less than diligent about paying them (after a re-finance which took the home insurance payments out of our monthly mortgage escrow, and had us pay directly). And there's one overriding reason for our lack of diligence: the U.S. Postal Service, and what it has become.
No, I don't mean that the check was in the mail, and the Postal Service delivered it too slowly; I mean that our bill would come embedded in stacks of glossy Verizon FiOS offers, newsprint grocery store fliers, catalogs for baby clothes (our younger is now 12), offers to send honor student Dawn Amidon (who does not exist, and was created by a town census typo eight years ago) to some civics camp, numerous credit card offers, and are you getting the point?
To get a notion of just how infrequently we mail anything, we still have a cache of thirty-nine cent stamps, which we do use whenever we must respond by mail.
About the only mail we get that can still be classified as "personal" are greeting cards from my parents on days that I ignore, the annual Xmas card/letter burst, and invitations for the kids to birthday parties. I find it fascinating that the latter are still happening, as if "How to Instruct Your Children in the Rules of Etiquette" books still have publishing dates in the 20th century.
I am seriously considering setting up a recycle bin next to our mailbox at the end of our driveway, so that the overwhelming majority of mail won't even enter the house.
(Sponsor me in the BARCC walk.)
These are good agents, who helped us wend our way thru the various forms when we had a water pipe freeze and burst. But we had been less than diligent about paying them (after a re-finance which took the home insurance payments out of our monthly mortgage escrow, and had us pay directly). And there's one overriding reason for our lack of diligence: the U.S. Postal Service, and what it has become.
No, I don't mean that the check was in the mail, and the Postal Service delivered it too slowly; I mean that our bill would come embedded in stacks of glossy Verizon FiOS offers, newsprint grocery store fliers, catalogs for baby clothes (our younger is now 12), offers to send honor student Dawn Amidon (who does not exist, and was created by a town census typo eight years ago) to some civics camp, numerous credit card offers, and are you getting the point?
To get a notion of just how infrequently we mail anything, we still have a cache of thirty-nine cent stamps, which we do use whenever we must respond by mail.
About the only mail we get that can still be classified as "personal" are greeting cards from my parents on days that I ignore, the annual Xmas card/letter burst, and invitations for the kids to birthday parties. I find it fascinating that the latter are still happening, as if "How to Instruct Your Children in the Rules of Etiquette" books still have publishing dates in the 20th century.
I am seriously considering setting up a recycle bin next to our mailbox at the end of our driveway, so that the overwhelming majority of mail won't even enter the house.
(Sponsor me in the BARCC walk.)
