Will the Post Office Ultimately Go the Way of the Milkman?
By Roberta Rosenberg on May 17, 2007 in Occasional Rantings
Do you remember the milkman?
Until I was about age 5 or maybe 6, the milkman would come to my house, walk through the gate and leave fresh bottles of milk and juice and sometimes a loaf of bread in the special insulated box that sat outside our side door. He’d take away the empty bottles, too, for reuse by the dairy.
It was a great convenience and when home delivery ended, it was a sad day and the end of an era.
Being in the direct mail business, you have to know that I love all things postal. So much so that my holiday gifts to clients usually have a stamp or mailbox theme to it. Not to wax too poetic, but there’s a certain romance in the idea of hand delivering a letter from here to there. From a lover to another. From a child to Santa Claus.
That’s why I was sad to read that Britain’s Royal Mail plans to shutter 20% - one in 5 - of its post offices within the next 2 years. The reason? No surprise here, the phenomenal growth of email and electronic delivery. The system is bleeding red with no end in sight.
No one loves the e-world more than me, but the loss of so many post office reminds me that we’re fast losing many of the essentials that hold a community together. When we lose the "public square" where we mix and mingle with each other, we lose another brick in our physical connection to each other.
And that’s a terrible loss to my mind.
Consider the folks of Garrett Park, Maryland. This is small town outside of Washington, DC is a nuclear-free zone and an arboretum. What’s more, in its 100+ history, It has never had home delivery of postal mail and its residents prefer it that way.
"The
Post Office is a social center, where residents empty their P.O.
boxes, chat or read the town bulletin board."
Makes me wonder how long Garrett Park will be able to hold onto its little post office if the USPS really gets serious about cutting its losses. And that day will come, too. Sooner than later.
Okay, jumping off Roberta’s nostalgia train …
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Alicia | May 18, 2007 | Reply
That is so sad. There is a romantic…something, about handwritten letters, cards, and deliveries. I hope we don’t lose post offices to email. I hope we don’t get that impersonal.
Alicia | May 18, 2007 | Reply
P.S. This may cheer you up - I just found it on another blog.
http://writenowisgood.typepad.com/write_now_is_good/2007/05/surprise_words_.html
Tom Chandler | May 18, 2007 | Reply
It’s interesting — as e-mail and online channels grow in stature, I’m beginning to think that direct mail projects — especially “lumpy” mailers to high-value prospects — will actually grow in impact.
Marketing aside, I love sending and receiving hand-written notes. It’s a gracious, old-world way to let someone know they matter to you.
And who — as a kid — didn’t die a little every day the postal carrier came and went without bringing us our secret decoder ring (or whatever).
Copywriting Maven | May 18, 2007 | Reply
I hear you, Tom. Even after 25 years in the business which would think would make me jaded, I still look forward to seeing what’s in the mailbox and I hope it’s something good for me.
Who ever thought that getting a lumpy package in the mail would be oh-so-special?
Al Brown | May 19, 2007 | Reply
The solution is getting rid of home delivery, not the local post office. Then we can all throw our junk mail away in a centralized location where it can be recycled without risk of identity theft.
Home delivery will return when robotic transportation becomes viable and everything will be delivered to you at home.
In terms of loss of romantic xyz, the post office should offer extra-cost services for the romantically inclined that the rest of us won’t have to subsidize.
Ramsey Fahel | May 20, 2007 | Reply
Do Not Mail Opt-Out Law would be fair to everyone.
The proposed recent “Do not mail” is an Opt-Out law. Only those not desiring advertising mail need opt-out. Anyone desiring advertising mail can do nothing - and continue to receive it. Why deny those wishing to avoid advertising mail the power to do so?
I do not consider handling unwanted advertising placed against my will on my personal property to be a civic obligation!
The US Supreme Court said in the Rowan case in 1970, ““In today’s [1970] complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider. Today’s merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman’s mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive.”
Furthermore, the Supreme Court said, “the mailer’s right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.
To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail.”
We need a nationwide “Do Not Mail” law to create a one-stop, convenient place for homeowners to give senders the aforementioned affirmative notice that we do not want certain kinds of mail sent to our homes.
http://www.newdream.org/emails/ta19.html
Signed,
Ramsey A Fahel