[plug] OT: Walk a mile in my shoes Mr Spammer!

[Leon Brooks]

On Saturday 07 December 2002 11:35 am, Jacqueline McNally wrote:
> I am beginning to get junk mail in my PO Box hand delivered by the
> postmaster. So either I will have to import the snails, or see how I can
> hang a sign at the post office.

IIRC from my days as a postie, you officially can't. IRL, you can ask the 
postmaster not to and they flag your box with a coloured sticker and the deed 
is done.

If particularly annoying snailspam continues to arrive, obliterate the 
delivery address very carefully, tape the offending item securely to a paving 
brick (on bad days, a complete slab or a full brick :-) you don't need any 
more, write RTS on it in thick texta, circle the originating address, wipe 
over any little flouro barcodes on it with a highlighter and drop it into a 
post box. It usually only takes one.

I've also found that the only way to stop Readers' Digest and Franklin Mint 
from snailspamming you is to `RTS - Deceased' three consecutive items.

Being a postie had its moments. One day I had a letter to deliver in an 
oh-so-thin special expensive lawyer's envelope. It was to one TK Meade, and 
was asking why they hadn't been paid after defending her on a shop-stealing 
charge. They'd mis-spelled her surname, and she'd moved six weeks ago without 
forwarding her mail. She'd walk around to the old address occasionally and 
take what she wanted from the box, leaving the rest. And I know I'm passing 
judgement on insufficient evidence, but I'd bet heavily that she was guilty. 
Nice to talk to, pretty, well mannered, but part of the sub-culture anyway.

One D Miniter would recieve an average of one piece of mail with scales on it 
(ie DoJ) every day. He had no mailbox, and one of my other customers who was 
related to him explained that he didn't want one, because he never got 
anything good. Darn straight. Never! Not once! He'd duck out the back and lay 
low if I knocked at the door with a sign-for. What a life! I got sick of 
constantly returning his mail, so I took to accumulating it (technically a 
no-no, it has to be delivered promptly or returned), and whenever a car with 
an open window, pram, empty box, toy truck etc was left on his lawn, he'd get 
a dozen or twenty scaley envelopes in that `mailbox' in one go.

One other HomesWest residence had a mailbox installed just so I could put a 
dunning letter in it. Form has to be followed, you know. (-: The maintenance 
man, a local, personally thanked me for writing `RTS - no mailbox' on a 
previous piece of mail. Apparently there's good margins in showing up just to 
install a mailbox :-)

Cheers; Leon