stupid mail award
Aug. 22nd, 2010 06:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacWhen my mother departed on a short but unexpected trip a few days ago, she left a small errand behind that she asked me to take care of, one of those little things that shouldn't take more than half an hour including travel time, but which is an added burden when you're already swamped and don't have an extra half hour. She'd received a postal due notice and wanted me to pick the item up.
OK, I could easily enough go by her post office on Friday, though it turned out to be more difficult than expected because the cramped and narrow little one-lane-each-way road that's the only way to get there - yes, this is the main post office for a city of 60,000 - was being repaved, and the traffic backups were five minutes in themselves.
The notice said the postage due was $8, and I wondered, what could accumulate that much postage due? It turned out to be a small flat box from some anonymously-named company in North Carolina. The clerk explained that it had been sent to her previous address, which she moved out of four weeks ago, by parcel post, and the PO's complimentary forwarding doesn't include parcel post, ergo a full shipping charge had to be imposed.
My mother was puzzled when I presented her with the box on her return. She hadn't ordered anything and the shipper was nothing she'd ever heard of. She opened it up and it turned out to be ... a tchotchke* from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to which she contributes. They thought all their contributors would appreciate a photograph, tastefully framed in wood for hanging in your home or office, of Obama signing the health care bill. (That would be the health care bill so cravenly and ineptly handled that it contained less than a quarter of what it had when it started, and about a tenth of what it should have, and whose final form most of us supported only because opposing it would have been even worse. Not a moment I remember with pride.)
And this complimentary item, due to ineptness and lack of consideration by the DCCC, cost her $8.
I suggested that the next time she contributes, she should write a check for $8 less than the pledge amount, and include a note explaining why.
*Yiddish, "a small piece of worthless crap, a decorative knick knack with little or no purpose" - Urban Dictionary
OK, I could easily enough go by her post office on Friday, though it turned out to be more difficult than expected because the cramped and narrow little one-lane-each-way road that's the only way to get there - yes, this is the main post office for a city of 60,000 - was being repaved, and the traffic backups were five minutes in themselves.
The notice said the postage due was $8, and I wondered, what could accumulate that much postage due? It turned out to be a small flat box from some anonymously-named company in North Carolina. The clerk explained that it had been sent to her previous address, which she moved out of four weeks ago, by parcel post, and the PO's complimentary forwarding doesn't include parcel post, ergo a full shipping charge had to be imposed.
My mother was puzzled when I presented her with the box on her return. She hadn't ordered anything and the shipper was nothing she'd ever heard of. She opened it up and it turned out to be ... a tchotchke* from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to which she contributes. They thought all their contributors would appreciate a photograph, tastefully framed in wood for hanging in your home or office, of Obama signing the health care bill. (That would be the health care bill so cravenly and ineptly handled that it contained less than a quarter of what it had when it started, and about a tenth of what it should have, and whose final form most of us supported only because opposing it would have been even worse. Not a moment I remember with pride.)
And this complimentary item, due to ineptness and lack of consideration by the DCCC, cost her $8.
I suggested that the next time she contributes, she should write a check for $8 less than the pledge amount, and include a note explaining why.
*Yiddish, "a small piece of worthless crap, a decorative knick knack with little or no purpose" - Urban Dictionary
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 01:56 pm (UTC)A much better argument against financial contributions is that this is the sort of junk they spend your money on.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-24 12:19 am (UTC)