The Latest Dinosaur
Do you need to get mail on Saturday? Or for that matter on most any day?
The only business mail I get, other than junk mail, is from courts or other lawyers sending a letter because we send letters (but at the same time send the same letter by Email, or if the lawyer has been around too long, by telecopy).
The USPC is offering early retirement to a quarter of it’s employees.
I got my first computer in 1983. When I started practicing law in 1987, we had IBM Selectrics and few “Quix” machines. (Word doesn’t know how to spell either.) The latter had 2K of memory and would print out what you had typed when the memory got almost full. Until then, you could “scroll back” and change what you’d typed if you peered at the tiny little “screen.”
By that time sending what you'd typed/printed started to be done by UPS or FedEx, as the recent telecopier became big in the late eighties and into the nineties. Email, in my business, got going in the mid-nineties.
Through this evolution, mail became a step-child. The only personal mail I now get is Christmas and birthday cards, the occasional graduation or wedding announcement and, sadly, a thank you note for having attended a funeral.
I suppose we need a postal service; but, for how long will we need it?
6 comments:
Newspapers, mail, etc. Going the way of the dinosaur. I wonder about magazines, though. There's something comforty about curling up on the couch with a new magazine.
Millions of people don't have computers, so mail service will be necessary for a long time to come, if only to send out bills.
I had a computer like that by Smith Carona and at the time, it was "The Bomb"
So, if they cut out Saturday mail... does that eliminate junk mail?
I'm with Doc on this... Bills come in and checks go out via snail mail for us, even though we're an Internet firm - whatever that means.
At home, all I use snail mail for is getting my bills in. I don't trust myself or the current state of spam detection enough to not worry about missing a bill notification.
Mail delivery on three days a week would be plenty for me. I suggest M,W and F. The post offices would be open as they are now for mailing of letters and bills. There I just saved the USPS untold millions of dollars.
I only check the PO box once a week, at best.
I still pay bills the old fashioned way, but a drop in the number of days a week that mail is delivered would not be the end of the world. It would probably cost the USPS some business, however, and redirect people toward online alternatives or FedEx/UPS.
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