I think next year, I may just send email Christmas cards instead.
What a pain.
8 thoughts on “Physical Objects are a Pain”
The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?
That appears to be the theory.
The post office also tries to increase suffering for things inconvenient for them.
You see, the Christmas cards I got have square envelopes. So, they are subject to a 12¢ non-machinable surcharge, meaning they cost 49¢ instead of the normal 37¢. This in and of itself isn’t such a big deal. However, they don’t have a 49¢ stamp. They don’t even have a 12¢ stamp to go along with the normal 37¢ one. No, they have 10¢ stamps and 2¢ stamps to go along with the normal 37¢ one.
I suspect that this is on purpose, since it costs them more than 12¢ extra to process it, so they want to discourage it by means beyond just an increased price. It’s got to cost them more than 2¢ to produce a 2¢ stamp, so they’re really just charging you by forcing you to do more work. But I may just be being too cynical here.
I stopped by the West Boylston post office before work today to see if I could get another book of 10¢ and 2¢ stamps out of their vending machine for the last few people whom I am still getting address for. The machine didn’t have those, but it did have a book of 3¢ stamps, so I could apply 4 of those to get the 12¢ extra postage on there.
*sigh*
Ouch! Don’t worry. Someday, you’ll have kids. Forcing children into manual labor is the perfect way to get them into the holiday spirit.
What bugs me the most is needing to go to a post office in order to purchase the obscure stamps. Also, it’s helpful to have them weigh it on their scales to ensure that it’s the correct amount of postage.
And post offices are only open during business hours, when I’m working.
With enough advance notice, one can look up the prices and buy the stamps online, and the delivery charge is worth not having the hassle and not using up gas. But I don’t have a post-office-quality letter scale at home, and I don’t use physical mail often enough to make it worth purchasing one.
This experience has led me to try to push Checkerboard to sell stamps with its products for the correct amount of postage for the items being sold.
It’s a good idea, but I don’t know if the alternate strategy — keeping the hidden costs such as postage hidden — might result in better sales. Same reason vendors don’t include tax in their price tags.
But at least the central post office in worcester (and in tewksbury in MA, so there’s more than one) have a small portion of the building open in off hours, where you can buy stamps at vending machines, and they even have a scale to weigh it, and you can type in where youre sending it for and all kinds of other cool things. That’s what i did yesterday :)
The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?
That appears to be the theory.
The post office also tries to increase suffering for things inconvenient for them.
You see, the Christmas cards I got have square envelopes. So, they are subject to a 12¢ non-machinable surcharge, meaning they cost 49¢ instead of the normal 37¢. This in and of itself isn’t such a big deal. However, they don’t have a 49¢ stamp. They don’t even have a 12¢ stamp to go along with the normal 37¢ one. No, they have 10¢ stamps and 2¢ stamps to go along with the normal 37¢ one.
I suspect that this is on purpose, since it costs them more than 12¢ extra to process it, so they want to discourage it by means beyond just an increased price. It’s got to cost them more than 2¢ to produce a 2¢ stamp, so they’re really just charging you by forcing you to do more work. But I may just be being too cynical here.
I stopped by the West Boylston post office before work today to see if I could get another book of 10¢ and 2¢ stamps out of their vending machine for the last few people whom I am still getting address for. The machine didn’t have those, but it did have a book of 3¢ stamps, so I could apply 4 of those to get the 12¢ extra postage on there.
*sigh*
Ouch! Don’t worry. Someday, you’ll have kids. Forcing children into manual labor is the perfect way to get them into the holiday spirit.
What bugs me the most is needing to go to a post office in order to purchase the obscure stamps. Also, it’s helpful to have them weigh it on their scales to ensure that it’s the correct amount of postage.
And post offices are only open during business hours, when I’m working.
With enough advance notice, one can look up the prices and buy the stamps online, and the delivery charge is worth not having the hassle and not using up gas. But I don’t have a post-office-quality letter scale at home, and I don’t use physical mail often enough to make it worth purchasing one.
This experience has led me to try to push Checkerboard to sell stamps with its products for the correct amount of postage for the items being sold.
It’s a good idea, but I don’t know if the alternate strategy — keeping the hidden costs such as postage hidden — might result in better sales. Same reason vendors don’t include tax in their price tags.
But at least the central post office in worcester (and in tewksbury in MA, so there’s more than one) have a small portion of the building open in off hours, where you can buy stamps at vending machines, and they even have a scale to weigh it, and you can type in where youre sending it for and all kinds of other cool things. That’s what i did yesterday :)
point noted :)