Email is being credited with the murder of the sidewalk mailbox, joining cell phones in a plot to destroy public communication hubs. The United States Post Office has removed 42,000 street mailboxes in the last six years, and nobody’s really noticing.
Email Credited With Public Mailbox Deaths
Like superheroes losing a place to change in public, some are equating the loss of the mailbox with the loss of an American cultural icon. Letter writing, perhaps like calligraphy, is becoming a lost art.
The USPS is also downsizing the number of mail carriers on staff. That doesn’t mean the Internet has killed the organization. Shipping has never been more in demand since the advent of eBay and Amazon.
But expect the next generation of movie spoof viewers to be confused by an unlikely sleuth, hiding inside one of the blue-domed metal boxes (the design of which is copyrighted by the USPS). That “piece of American iconography” has a limited shelf life.
The USPS said that if a mailbox gets fewer than 25 pieces of mail per day, it’s pulled. If enough of the public complains about the removal, it’ll be put back, they say.
One has to wonder what other industries have been affected. The envelope industry? The companies that make that terrible tasting envelope glue? The cool pen industry? Post-its? No, we’ll always need Post-Its, right?
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