The following transcript is based upon an actual event....
"Bonnie" is a woman in her mid-thirties, living with a male partner in a condominium unit. There are 183 units, broken up into 13 separate clusters of structures of indeterminate number. Each cluster of condos shares a common CBU or "cluster box" for mail delivery. Each CBU has a separate slot or box designated for each condo unit.
Sometime, late last spring, Bonnie's mail box began to fill. She or her partner was failing to empty the box on a regular basis. As the CBUs are secured by locks, it is not an uncommon habit of residents to only empty the box on a weekly, or even bi-weekly schedule. Some residents even forgo notifying the USPS of hold requests, assuming the mail will be safe during their absences. Thus, the mail carrier did not become alarmed until the volume of mail began to interfere with delivery.
Bonnie's unit is on the ground floor, with windows that can be observed from the outside. There was no visual evidence that the condo unit had been vacated. Finally, the regular mail carrier noticed a grocery bag left on the kitchen counter, indicating that someone might be present at that time, and decided to try and find out what was going on...
(Door bell is rung. Bonnie answers the door..)
- (letter carrier) "Ma'am? May I ask you a few questions? You aren't picking up your mail, and I wondered if something was wrong..."
- (Bonnie) "Oh, that! I don't want it. Is there any way you can just throw it away?"
- (letter carrier) "No Ma'am, I'm not allowed to do that.. You'd have to speak to the Post Office about stopping delivery..But, can I ask why you don't want it? Isn't there anything important you might be missing by ignoring it?"
- (Bonnie) "Not that I can think of..."
- (letter carrier) "What about bills? Wouldn't you miss paying your rental dues, utilities?"
- (Bonnie) "Oh, no! I pay those online.."
- (letter carrier) " By credit card, or electronic transfer? You might also be paying interest on your bills if you pay by card. And I can't see paying for a credit card with the same card... And if by transfer, do you know if the bank charges additional fees for electronic transactions? They might be more than the cost of postage.."
- (Bonnie) "It's by transfer. I don't know about fees, but I don't mind.."
- (letter carrier) "What about legal notices? The town government, and probably the Condominium management is often obliged to notify you by certified mail of any important construction or work being done. That way, they receive a signed receipt proving you were notified. If the first attempt to contact you fails, the notice of the attempt is left in your mail box, and all subsequent attempts will also be notice slips left in your box."
- (Bonnie) "Well, you could just leave them in the door, couldn't you?"
- (letter carrier) "That's not our procedure, and you'd have to make a request of the Post Master to change it... Getting back to your bill payments, don't you think it might seem odd to, say your insurance company, if you're making electronic payments but your mailed bills start coming back marked 'Unable to forward, address unknown'?"
- (Bonnie) "Well, I could explain by phone.."
- (letter carrier) "Then there's insured packages sent by mail order companies and relatives.. The packages that are left in the CBU parcel lockers,which require a key to access, and the key is left in your box... Parcels aren't always left by the door, where they can be stolen.."
The thing is, "Bonnie" isn't alone. More and more people are finding the Postal Service at best unnecessary, at worst a nuisance. People often fail to complete forwarding notices, or fill out the fields inaccurately. They complete a forward order listing the family name, but forget to complete a separate one for the wife's maiden name, or believe it will also automatically be forwarded. Some unmarried couples sharing a residence assume that putting both names on the same forward order will assure mail for both of them will be forwarded.
Worse, some folks consider the Postal Service in the same way they do any other utility. That is to say, not at all. It's assumed that it's the USPS that must keep track of them. I call this the "Magic Smurf" theory: all Postal workers are magic smurfs that do everything for you... There are occasions where people have asked carriers to throw out all third class advertising mail for them. First; third class mail currently makes up three quarters of all USPS revenues. Second; Even third class postage implies the contract is with the sender and the Postal Service for delivery, not with the receiver. The carrier is obliged to deliver the mail, irregardless, unless that particular piece is refused by the recipient. Third; it's not the Postal Service's duty to dispose of your trash. That's not in the contract. Fourth; would you really want a third party to decide what mail you should receive, and what mail you won't? That's granting power of censorship...
Now, compare this to e-mail: you have spam filters to weed out unsolicited messages, you have permanent address that travels with you wherever you go, and can access from anywhere. You don't have to memorize and write out addresses, they're either available from an address file, or by hyperlink. You have no bulk rates based upon size of the message. No physical thing to store or throw out. No postage.
Someone ought to do a comparison study about carbon footprints between e-mail and "snail mail". Typically, regular mail is an energy intensive process. It involves the harvesting and processing of wood pulp into paper. The manufacture of the envelopes, stamps, ink. The mechanical sorting and distribution of the letters and the bulk shipments by truck, or airplane, of the mail.
On the other hand, e-mail requires a computer (fixed cost) that requires an electrical power source that runs 24/7 (continuous cost), a network of modems (rented, continuous cost) and cables (fixed cost) to connect to servers (fixed cost) that also requires 24/7 electrical power. All this means a lot of mining, oil drilling, and hazardous waste disposal. And while sending an e-mail might be free, you're still paying for the broadband or dial up connections.
Still, the difference in preference between the two tends to be the divide between those who use computers and those who don't: Age, education and economic class. We may see this divide change with time, as those recalcitrant elderly "age out" (to put it nicely) ,economic opportunities increase for the lower incomes, and education becomes more computer-centric in schools. Yet it also may be necessary to continue the USPS as a physical back up system, in order to provide connection to those unable to utilize computers.
No comments:
Post a Comment