Today I happened to be walking in the door as the mailman was opening the building’s mailboxes and I got a chance to watch him in action. Basically, he feels his job is to take envelopes and magazines and smash them into little balls in the bottom of each box, even if there’s enough room to slide them in. I watched as he slid two envelopes into my mailbox and then—without curling it a little to fit perfectly and easily—smashed my Wired issue in on top, pushing and cramming and bending and tearing.
Ironically, from what I could tell, he saves no time using this method. In fact, I estimate it would have taken him only a fraction of a second to get the Wired into the box by curling it at the mid-point. Instead, he spent 20 seconds cramming. I’m constantly amazed my Netflix DVDs aren’t cracked, since they’re almost always torn out of their envelopes in the box.
