Mail Aid
by
Pam Amado and Carl Imboden

This is a rotten time to be a postal worker. Electronic communication is diminishing our mail stream while our managers attempt to outsource and automate our jobs. What we need is Mail Aid, an increase in the mail stream that simultaneously provides us with more work and slows our society's rush to a paperless world. In the absence of any rock stars to hold a Mail Aid concert, we'll have to create the change ourselves through the way we interact with the Post Office as consumers. Your purchasing power could save some postal worker his job--it might even save your job--so please carefully consider some questions about your spending habits.

First, where do you buy your stamps? Postal management loves selling stamps through a supermarket, because each sale generates the same profit as a sale from a branch window without the expense of a salaried clerk. If, however, you are unlike our managers and take no joy in our ever-shrinking work force, you can help keep a few of us employed by always purchasing your stamps directly from the Postal Service. The most convenient method we writers have discovered is buying stamps by mail.

Obtaining stamps in this fashion is no more troublesome than renewing a magazine subscription. Postal Service form 3227-A, better known as a "Stamps by Mail" form, (or any number of colorfully mangled customer titles), provides everything you'll need to place an order. The form is readily available at your local station and another will be returned to you with each order you place. In addition, most carriers don't mind bringing one to your mailbox, but please remember that this is not a form they usually carry so they'll need turnaround time.

The biggest challenge about filling out form 3227-A is fitting your name and address in the too-small space provided for "return address." Once you've solved that problem (one of us uses preprinted return address stickers with good results) mail the form back in its postage prepaid envelope with a check or money order for your stamps. The Post Office will return your purchase by first class or priority mail, depending on how many stamps you buy. How long does it take? Reports vary widely, but hover around one week, a delay we suspect most postal workers will accept if their stamp orders provide additional job security for a carrier, a clerk, and several mail processors. If you're worried about being caught without stamps, try buying two books initially and place a new order each time you use up one book.

Or you could help someone save their job by using the oldest method known to Man to purchase postage. Buying stamps across the counter at your local USPS station or branch helps keep a window clerk employed, allows you to dress up you mail with the perfect stamp design, (we always ask for authors or journalists), and provides instant gratification, since you'll leave the building with postage in hand. You'll probably spend some time in line, but does that outweigh providing job security for a postal employee rather than a supermarket employee? Line delays aren't exactly unheard of in supermarkets, either. How many times have you been trapped at a customer service counter (a misnomer if ever there was one) while the lone check-out clerk attempts to simultaneously sell a money order, break a large bill for another cashier, and run the lotto machine for the cranky old guy who's buying tickets for the entire trailer park? And on your next shopping trip, when you attempt to beat the system by purchasing stamps from the cashier with your groceries, you choose the check-out person who just sold her last booklet and must walk to the service counter to get more. With the cashier gone to face the inevitable counter wait and shoppers backing up behind you like rush hour drivers at a "road narrows" sign, you hear a familiar voice and recognize the cranky old guy, behind you now, loudly complaining that he "always picks the wrong line." At that moment you mentally abandon this stressful atmosphere, travel to your warm and happy place, and reconsider the convenience of buying stamps at the supermarket.

One last note about stamp purchasing; we don't recommend that you use the central Stamp Fulfillment Center located in Kansas City. Although convenient, their toll free phone number reduces the effectiveness of our efforts by half, and a subcontracted individual will fill your telephone order, not a USPS employee.

Purchases from a distance bring us to our next question: Do you shop by catalog? Many of us buy stuff in this fashion, particularly late shift workers, because where can you find a birthday present at three a.m.? Wal-Mart is open, but we all know better than to shop at a union-busting, employee abusing, anti-feminist sweatshop that's forcing other stores into a race to the bottom of the employee benefits barrel, right? And since we all don't shop there, that pretty much leaves nowhere.

So when you order by catalog, do you politely insist that the company ship your package by the USPS? Doing so is good policy, and most legitimate mail order houses will respect your request without hesitation. While we admit to a little prejudice here, our USPS-delivered packages arrive at our doors looking as though they were treated more kindly than when they ride with our competitors. And since any USPS transaction generates a portion of a penny in our paycheck (we're all one big, happy family, yes?), it's similar to one of those "cash back with every purchase" deals the credit card companies offer, (and knowing the credit card companies, probably about as good, too).

But don't despair--catalogs and their sales help finance the USPS in a variety of ways--the most obvious being the multiple responses you receive from a purchase. Buy a pen from Farhneys (one of us collects pens) and Levenger and Colorado Pen Direct also send you catalogs. Buy a tee shirt from Wireless and four other companies want to show you their wares, (no pun intended), and each pays your employer for the privilege.

Perhaps you consider mail order businesses wasteful because they use paper to advertise their offerings with no sale guaranteed in advance. Perhaps you've even signed the government sponsored "opt out" list for direct mail advertising which has reduced our mail stream by more than nine million pieces. If so, we understand your feelings but humbly disagree. To places like Herrington or Pottery Barn, mail advertising serves the same purpose as bookshelves in a bookstore; you can't buy stuff when you don't know it exists. In parallel, most sales processes use practices that could be labeled "wasteful." Retail stores construct huge buildings, air-condition and light them, and encourage you to visit them in your gasoline-burning vehicle. Truth is, probably the best thing we could do for the environment is stop shopping all together--but how could we perform such a radical act?--shopping is what America is all about.

Recycling also reduces the environmental effect of direct mail advertising, and catalogs lend themselves to a very special type of recycling. If some response mailings are so unrelated to your interests that you know you will never order anything from them, we suggest you pass them on to an acquaintance who might choose something from their pages. Speaking of which, one of us is trying to obtain a Pen Hospital catalog . . . anyone got a spare?

Our final question: Do you monitor your personal accounts and pay your bills electronically or through the mail? Companies benefit when you interact with them via the net in the same fashion that the USPS saves money by selling stamps at a supermarket: the company maximizes its profit by reducing postage (your income) and hiring fewer employees (someone else's livelihood). The writers do not wish to contribute to either of these trends, so we pay by paper and demand paper statements in return, all through the communication network of the USPS.

Some companies offer a slight price reduction to those who pay electronically. If you feel that you must take advantage of such a service we hope you will at least have the company bill you through the mail, since some mail aid is better than none. But before you make that decision, you might like to clarify your choice by performing the following simple comparative exercise.

Begin by drawing a line down a sheet of paper to divide it into two halves. On the left half, compute the yearly total of all the money you save by not using the Post Office. Estimate generously. Include all the packages you saved money on by using the other guys and the thank you and birthday cards you saved postage on by sending as E-mail. Then, after you've done that, write your yearly salary on the right side of the page and ask yourself, "Which one of these is larger, and which one would I most like to keep?" To the vast majority of us, the answer will be obvious.

We note with interest that the Post Office's own Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) administrators are leaders in the race to a paperless (and postageless) world. Several years ago, the TSP managers announced they would no longer mail participants written quarterly reports detailing how their investments were faring, but would instead maintain the information online for individual electronic viewing. The administrators also stated that, upon request, they would resume mailing quarterly reports to those people who have limited online access. No doubt they were envisioning the occasional Stone Age caveman who, like one of the writers, somehow slouches through the twenty-first century without even possessing a wheezy Commodore 64 to arm him for internet battle. Despite that probability, the writers maintain that no person has truly unlimited web access, so we recommend that every TSP participant submit the letter separately posted from this article to TSP and request that they resume mailing you quarterly paper statements of your account's value. This action would be a great start for any postal worker who is determined to redirect some of our lost revenue to the mail stream.

We've also separately posted a digested version of this article. We hope you share this shorter version with your friends and relatives (maybe even mail it to them), in an effort to get them involved. More than 800,000 people work directly for the USPS, and nine million people have jobs involving the mail stream (someone has to print and collate those AARP magazines). Consider the difference we could make if even half of those people, along with everyone who cares about them, started trying to stabilize the system.

The writers sincerely hope that you will join us in an ongoing effort to generate work for all USPS employees. We suggest that those of you who wish to share a success story or submit an idea we haven't covered do so by writing a letter to your APWU local. And to those naysayers who scoff at our ideas and decree, "It'll never work. You can't stop progress." we offer the observation that placing a brake on the onrushing wheels of postal downsizing is an act which cannot be measured by all-or-nothing success or failure, but rather by the more nebulous yardstick of how long we can delay the elimination of our jobs. True, we can't stop progress, (or what passes for progress in our muddle-headed society), but we can slow it down, and while our culture and our employers may be determined to antiquate us in the name of production, profit, and a paperless society, no reason exists for us to aid them through the conduct of our personal lives.