Stamp Acts

[Editor's note: I wrote this a while back, and for some reason never posted it here. Please see the previous entry for details about the sale I'm currently having on issues #1-4 -- and if you already have those issues, please spread the word about the sale, as I really need to make a dent in my back stock. Sadly, said sale does nothing to knock out the supply of 10 x 13 envelopes around here.]

I just wasted about ten dollars on a box of envelopes it will now take me approximately thirty years to use up.

I thought I had perfectly good reason for laying in a supply of 10 x 13 envelopes. A lot of people have been buying multiple copies of SHM -- say, one copy of issue #2 and one of issue #3 -- and the 9 x 12 envelopes I use for single-issue mailings won't hold two magazines. I thought it would be logical to mail two magazines to the same address in a single envelope. I'd save paper, and even a little on postage. Right?

Look, that's how that kind of thing is supposed to work. If you send a letter that costs more than one stamp to send, they don't make you stick another first-class stamp on it; the second stamp costs a few cents less.

So I figured that one envelope containing two magazines would cost a little less to send than two envelopes with a magazine apiece.
I brought one of these envelopes to the post office, and it took me a minute to register the fact that it cost me more than twice as much as mailing one magazine.

I asked the man behind the counter to explain this to me, and he said something about how, because of the size of the envelope and the weight of the whole thing, we were now in parcel-postage territory now.

I still don't understand why that makes such a difference.

Someone suggested that the post office is trying to encourage people to use standard-sized mailing containers. The thing is, I'm not using bizarre, fifteen-sided envelopes that look like huge D&D dice. They're perfectly normal.

Periodically, I have to send boxes of the magazine to my advertising guru Gail for her to use in press packets. I once sent her thirty copies in a box I had left over from a print run. It cost me just under ten dollars to mail.

Yesterday, I sent six copies of the magazine in an envelope. It cost me almost twelve dollars.

Whoever makes the rules over at the post office is completely insane, anyway.

Remember when the postal rates went up a few months ago? Before that, mailing a copy of SHM cost $1.82.

Notice something about that amount? It's an even number. It's a dollar stamp, plus two first-class ones.

Nice. Easy. Cute.

I love buying the dollar stamps, by the way. They sell them by the sheet, and apparently I'm the only one in the universe who needs them, because the person behind the counter always has to go get some from the back room. This one woman always looks really ticked that I make her get up.

I also love the fact that I have to buy them in such quantity. Well, I don't love that, actually. I'd like to just steal them. But since I'm clumsy and irredeemably honest, I at least like the expression that the person behind the counter gets when I buy them.

They come twenty to a sheet. Which makes me do math.

The last time I was at the post office, I had to think about that a minute, which is the kind of thing you're supposed to do before you get in line.

"Okay," I said finally. "I need twenty sheets of dollar stamps, please."

The lady smiled and presented me with one sheet. "Twenty," she said.

"No," I said. "Not twenty stamps. Twenty sheets."

All smiles stopped. "That is four hundred dollars," she pointed out in an injured tone.

"Yeah, I know," I said. "Hey, are they ever on sale?"

She got up to raid everyone else's work station, and finally came back with exactly as many stamps as I'd asked for, plus a very sour expression. I swear she was this close to rigging up a tip jar.

At least she actually went and got them. One woman told me she didn't have that many in her drawer, and actually seemed to think that in that case, I should just not need them after all. She looked really annoyed when I said I'd wait while she ordered them. It was the end of a long day, and I had a book and half a chocolate bar in my purse. I think she figured out I was serious, because all of a sudden she remembered where they might just have some.

Then of course I have to buy rolls of first-class stamps. The last time I went in and I said that I needed first-class, the lady got all perky and showed me about eight or nine different kinds, each one prettier than the next.

"These are beautiful," I said. "But I need rolls of stamps. Are any of these available in rolls?"

"No," she snapped, shutting the display book. I think she was mad because people who buy rolls of stamps are apparently going to actually use the stamps, as opposed to just having them around to look pretty and letting the postal carriers take a load off. At any rate, she gave me a bunch of those boring flag stamps.

Anyway. So then the postage rates went up. I expected to have to put one dollar stamp and two shiny new first-class stamps on each envelope. Same story, slightly different characters.

Except that for some reason, the price of sending one issue of SHM went from $1.82 to $1.85.

Can someone please tell me why a perfectly normal, ordinary weight and rate went from an even to an odd number?

"Ask them if they have 85-cent stamps," my husband advised when he heard about this. "They used to sell 82-cent stamps. And that way you'll only have to put two stamps on every envelope."

Dutifully I asked, and was told that, no, they didn't have that kind of stamp.

"Look, this is what I'm trying to mail," I said, handing her an envelope with a magazine inside. "And I have a lot of them. So what's the best thing for me to do?"

She thought for a minute, then brightened and showed me some pretty $2 stamps. Those, she suggested, would cover the amount of postage I needed, save me time -- I'd only need to stick one on -- and look cute in the bargain. I think they had foxes on them, which was perhaps appropriate for the situation.

"If I used those," I pointed out, "I'd be spending fifteen cents more per envelope than I needed to." Mental arithmetic isn't my strong suit, but I thought that just six or seven issues would cost me a dollar in cute efficiency. And I had hundreds of these puppies to mail.

Time is not money for me. Money is money, in my house. So I bought a gajillion one-penny stamps -- which come in sheets of twenty, just like the dollar stamps, but do have the virtue of costing far less -- and resigned myself to mailing sessions that feel like some kind of lame craft project. It's hard to take the whole thing seriously when I have to use three separate kinds of stamps (whose colors and designs don't even go together, by the way) to get exactly the postage I need.

What I really ought to do is just bring in all my stuffed envelopes, hundreds every three months and a few every week after that, and crash them down on the counter. "These need postage," I'll announce.

What are they going to do? Say no? Insist that I buy stamps and stick them on all by myself? They can't do that. They're not the boss of me.

I could bring my local post office to a grinding halt if I pulled a stunt like that. Believe me, it's tempting.

Which may be why my local post office has no parking lot. They're not going to help troublemakers like me.

Still, I guess I could always call a cab...