Posts from Thursday, November 1st, 2007

Enveloped

Published 16 years, 4 months past

A while back, my office shredder froze up.  And I don’t mean whined and whirred feebly when I fed it something: I mean it was dead silent and completely inoperable.  I admit that it had gotten fairly heavy use, as I shred all the unsolicited credit card offers we receive on the grounds that it gives me a comforting illusion of protecting my financial identity.  Just go with me on that one, okay?

So I picked up a new shredder the other day and started getting busy with the catch-up.  It will come as no surprise that during the shredterregnum, a whoooole lotta envelopes piled up.  And since I opted to buy a medium-duty version instead of the $200 monster model, it became necessary to open each offer up and pull out the contents for shredding—just feeding the whole unopened envelope was too much for the blades to handle.  While I was at this tedious task, I put aside all the postage-paid return envelopes, since they didn’t really need to go into the maw.  I ended up with a stack of two or three dozen.

Well, now what?  I could take a page from Chris Anderson‘s playbook and lay down the “turnabout” card: since they sent me unsolicited mail, this is a perfect opportunity to send some unsolicited mail back to them.  On their dime, no less.  But is that really such a great idea?  There’s something about it that rubs me ever so slightly the wrong way, which is odd given my usual penchant for low-level creative anarchy.

So I’m at a bit of a loss.  Anyone have a better suggestion for what I should do?


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