The Postal Service

Posted: November 18th, 2008 | Author: linda | Filed under: for my own amusement | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments »

I am often fascinated by strange or mundane things. The USPS is one of them. It doesn’t seem all that amazing now, what with email and the internets and such, but just think about it… I write your address on a piece of paper and pay a small fee [holy crap, I just looked it up, it’s 42ยข now to mail a letter???], and in a day or two, you have that piece of paper in your hand. Not that amazing, sure, but think about the billions of other pieces of paper flying around in this magnificent system, all of them being delivered with the same efficiency. Amazing!

Plus, it was founded by Ben Franklin, so you know it has to be amazing. He invented bifocals and wanted the national bird to be a turkey. How can you doubt anything this man comes up with? He’s on the hundred dollar bill, for crying out loud. This is just me speculating because I rarely ever back up my outlandish statistics with fact, but I’m pretty sure if George Washington and Ben Franklin were to fight in the octagon, the only winner would be AMERICA. Because they would kill each other.

Think about it: you’ve got Ben, who is a veritable colonial MacGyver, and then you have the most powerful man to ever exist, George “I’ll chop you down like a cherry tree” Washington. And I’m not talking political or mental power. I’m referring to sheer strength. George Washington was 12 feet tall, weighed a ton, had bones of steel and was made of radiation.

But I digress. I’ve got a lot more to say about George Washington, but I’ll save that for another day. This is about the Postal Service and why it is amazing.

Aside from the fact that it’s incredibly efficient, which I love; cheap, which I also love; the Post Ofice pays incredibly well. Having just recently lost my job, this is of particular interest to me, and I am genuinely considering getting a job with the USPS. Fun fact.

But yes, the whole point of all of this was to preface an outline of various tests I am going to perform to check the efficiency and overall performance of the postal system. I frequently do completely random things for no reason other than for my own enjoyment and this is one of those things.
Note: I am testing the USPS as a whole, not individual postal workers. Apart from the obvious speed tests, I plan to send a series of “problematic” items through the mail to see if/when they are delivered. All of these tests will be performed to domestic addressed mail [unless otherwise specified], as adding a foreign postal system would throw too many variables into the mix.

I plan to:

  • write something horribly offensive on the envelope about the prospective postman handling the letter.
  • obscure unimportant parts of the address. [as in, scratch out the city, but leave the postcode]
  • write an incredibly descriptive location but not an address. [this will potentially only work in a rural town]
  • staple stamps to something that isn’t a letter. [rubber chicken, shoe, empty box of cookies]
  • write the address in gigantic letters, filling the entire front and back of the envelope with the address.
  • use a black envelope/color the entire envelope with black markers to screw up the postmark.
  • write the neighborhood instead of the city. [wrigleyville, il]
  • cover the entire envelope in clear packing tape to screw up the postmark.
  • write the address backwards so you have to hold it in a mirror to read properly.
  • write the address very small right next to the stamp so it gets covered by the postmark.
  • write a domestic address in a foreign language with a non-roman alphabet.
  • put question marks after every single part of a foreign address.
  • substitute question marks for relatively important parts of the address. [1?06 Thorndale Ave.]
  • write all numbers out. [six zero six six zero]
  • write the address with yellow highlighter.
  • overly flourish the address so it’s impossible to read.
  • write the address in old German blackletter so it’s impossible to read.
  • draw distracting illustrations/designs all over the front of the envelope so it’s hard to find the address.

Some of these I know WILL work, it’s just a matter of how long will it take to send. I plan to drop all of these letters in a mailbox rather than giving them directly to a postal worker or dropping them in a box at a post office, as I feel that would give an unfair advantage to the letter based on the perkiness or helpfulness of the person at the counter.

Once I have enough addresses collected, I will purchase a couple books of stamps, write some letters and begin the experiment.