It seems every day when I go to the mailbox, there is more junk mail than stuff I actually want. Well, I don't want the bills, either, but that isn't what I talking about. So, for the month of August, I saved it all, just to see how much of this crap I get. What do I consider junk? Anything I didn't ask to be sent. Things like catalogs that I ordered one thing off the internet 4 years ago for a sister's Christmas present (and other catalogs from similar orders on other things). Credit card offers. The PJ Star "Shopper".
Per my bathroom scale, it amounted to 16 pounds. 16 pounds of crap. Over a half pound of crap a day. Personally, I think that is excessive crappage.
4 ads from Comcast. 2 from AT&T. 2 from Direct TV sent to my business that I closed almost 10 years ago. 2 different dental office offers. A place I had my car serviced a few times sending me a "service notice" (which I found funny as they at one time told me the car was a piece of junk and I should trade it in) and several labeled "Friends at" or "neighbor". And my favorite: I could be part of a class action lawsuit that would net me $1.31...before the stamp to send it back in.
I read on another blog's comment section that a postal carrier delivers about 600 pounds of mail a day. I see why. If we were to reduce each households "load" by a half pound a day.....
I guess all this crap produces jobs. Jobs to plant the trees, to cut down the trees, to make paper out of the trees, someone to buy the paper, someone to need an ad, someone to design the ad, someone to write the check to pay for the ad, postage to be paid for the ad and it to be delivered to my mailbox so I can say "WTF is all of this shit?", throw it away into a bag made by someone else, someone picks in up in a truck made by someone else who hauls it away to a dump where someone else pushes it around with a bulldozer made by someone else.
Now I feel like a peon in a nasty cycle. However, I don't think I'd hurt the job market too badly if they skipped me.
5 comments:
I feel your pain - and that of the mail carrier. You think the senders would give up after awhile. I love sending stuff back in their postage paid envelopes and simply write "NO" across the offer. Sometimes I write "Take me off your mailing list", but I don't know that it works. But at least they have to pay to bother me.
16 pounds in one month? Yikes...
Did that include a phone book? I think it should be illegal to leave trash, like phone books, on my front step.
As you mention re DirecTV, some of these mailers are persistent. I joined the ACLU for $10 about seven years ago, and immediately I was bombarded with email and snail mail recruitment for various liberal magazines and organizations. I wrote to them to ask that they take me off all these lists they sold my name to, which, amazingly, happened.
However, ever since my year's membership expired (I was not going to renew after that experience), every couple of months I get a new letter in the mail. "There's no better time to rejoin blah blah". Big thick letters that must cost 20-30 cents each to mail, much less the printing costs.
This has been going on for at least six years, and the incredible part is that they've *followed* me to two new addresses, across the country each time. By now they've spent 10 times what I gave them. You gotta wonder what portion of their budget goes into these mailings.
No, no phone books. But 4 weekly shoppers from the PJ Star, a restaurant supply catalog, various gardening catalogs, three different cycling catalogs (although I only remember ordering from one of them once on the internet), Penzeys (which I do leaf through), several different warranty extension letters, countless State Farm, Allstate and other insurance fliers, the lawsuit thingy that was in a large legal sized envelope, a "trail subscription" magazine, countless Direct TV, US Cellular, AT&T, Comcast, credit card, dental, internet and a busload of stuff that is "bulk rate" that I don't even open.
We get an absolute ton of junk mail too, but I at least know how & why these folks have mt info...except one. This local company bombards my snail mail with at least a postcard or two a week and that doesn't even cover email. I have no idea who they are or how they got my info, but it's getting ridiculous!
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