One of my favourite parts of the working day is the trip home. The ability to blithely scoot through the traffic while members of the steering-wheel brigade impotently gnash their teeth at the sight of my retreating exhaust pipe is always fun. Lately though, my arrival at Casa Kyknoord has been somewhat soured by the proliferation of paper in my post-box.
Junk mail seems to be making a serious comeback. Every day the hinges on my mailbox are pushed ever closer to bursting point by numerous enthusiastic marketers who seem to believe that if one stupid advert doesn’t catch my eye, then the other seventeen identical copies will definitely do the job.
Yes, I realise it’s more likely that the sorry soul tasked with delivering the stupid things is simply trying to get rid of their pile of pamphlets as quickly as possible. What I can’t understand is why they don’t just dump the whole lot in the nearest bin and go home. Surely this would be more efficient than making me the middle-man?
the other side of the mountain 
My problem right now is this soft tab viagra email spam that seems to be flooding my inbox.. i wonder what they are trying to tell me?!?!?!?!?
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I have wondered the same thing (about the pamphlets, not Viagra). I guess it’s a guilty conscience thing, since the rule is probably to “stick them all in letterboxes until you run out”. At least I hope so. It’d be nice to know we at least still have blips of morality in this country, if we can’t have proper morals.
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i keep getting nasty spyware hiding in my junk emails these days. How do they do that? I run spybot once a day and it always have five or six new things to remove. Aargh!
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Someone stole the “no ads” sticker on my postbox. I’m guessing the guy who does yours does mine… and surely that’s a comfort, right?
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Okay I’m going to make a BIG confession here… I once took a job posting things through people’s doors… we didn’t get paid by the leaflet but by the hour and there were people checking we went up down the relevant streets… once was quite enough for me and my youthful need for money was insufficient to tempt me to do more… okay confession over (blush)
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I don’t really get junkmail in my mail box – but my e-mail box, now thats a different story all together, on Monday I will probably have 120 e-mails and all will sinmply be deleted. It is so annoying.
Be annoying, the world needs more nnoyings. Be alert, the world needs more lerts too – mhe.
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Great thing, we have that delete button handy!
At times I am so pissed of by all that junk!
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It’s still better than telephone marketing..AAAARRRGHH!
Caller display is the greatest invention since the wheel.
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I’d rather have junk mail than bills. Doesn’t your lawyer every write to you? I don’t hear you complaining about that!
Oh! Sorry! My mistake.
teavrbtv – handy beside-the-bed TeasMaid and personal massage tool
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Those silly things must work on enough people to make them worthwhile. I simply detest them!
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our postboxes are locked behind a gate so the junkmail propagators can’t get there!
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Angel: how does the regular postman get to it then, if its behind a gate? Or have I just missed something really obvious? 🙂
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Daytripper: Hmm… a hard one to answer.
MJW: That’s one way of looking at it. Quite frankly I don’t know whether it’s better to have immoral intelligent people, or moral, but stupid ones.
Kate: Sorry, I’ll stop. Promise.
anne: This guy must have really long arms.
Caroline: I would have bribed the checker and gone home.
Spookie: I’d rather be aloof, we have enough of the others in my opinion.
gautami tripathy: Better to be pissed off than pissed on.
homo escapeons: The sliced bread lobby would disagree, but I take your point.
Cherrypie: At least bills are finite. Junk mail knows no bounds.
sophie: There’s no way to tell, but saturation-bombing has always been a cherished marketing tool.
angel: Not possible without extensive renovation in my block.
Kate: Maybe the post office also employs that guy with the really long arms.
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You should start your own business – employ a couple of students to go around after the mail-droppers and remove the unwanted mail before the intended recipients get home. I reckon people would pay well for that service.
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Cool, now I know where to forward all my junkmail… 😉
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Yes I don’t understand why they don’t dump it all in the nearest bin.
When I had the unfortunate task of delivering junk mail as a student, I did that. Who doesn’t?
However, my job did only last one day.
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One of these days, once the internet has well and truly taken over and you no longer get snail mail, you’ll look back on junk mail in your postbox with misty eyes.
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what we need is a company that designs spam filters for hard copy spam. A device you fit onto your postbox that scans items being delivered and diverts spam to an attached shredder. A flamethrower attached to the doorbell that can sense Jehovah’s Witnesses. A service from Telkom that delivers a shock down the phone line to phone spammers. All these things i would pay shiny money for.
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Terri: Send me your business plan and I’ll have my people get in touch with your people.
LiVEwiRe: Everyone needs a hobby.
Peas: I used to work for the Arts faculty at UCT as a nude model. I didn’t have much to do, because for some unknown reason, everyone pulled out of the course that year.
Reluctant Nomad: Here’s to misty eyes, then.
moonflake: Me too. Your business plan goes to the top of the pile.
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