Return to Sender

PUTTING A STAMP Snail mail a thing of the past?

NOBODY WRITES FOR THE POST Office anymore. Somehow the thought of it is quite old fashioned that none of us even bother to look into the register if such an office still exists, let alone doing its regular business, or, at least accommodating a few customers.

They are, in fact, still at it. But it's a dead end street. 

Snail mail is long gone. What started as a hobby, a pen pal medium, or a source of intense anticipation for the recipient, has now been set aside for most of the day, and for good measure. The mere act of letter writing is in danger (like it hadn't been for more than a decade now) of rotting itself in the archives of these offices, like dinosaurs seeking refuge from the incoming ice age. And we need not wonder that in the ensuing years most of these outlets would suffer the same fate, rotting in that subzero coldness.

Like your dearly departed, your post office next door is a thing of the past. And not even the delivery of packages can save itself from its impending demise, even as LBC, Western Union, or Lhuillier for that matter are taking steps to remain relevant, updating their services in ways more accessible to an average client. But it's been a while since the changing of the guard took place.

Blame it on the internet! The rise of social media, in particular, has intensified even more the loss of these post offices into another level, as the latter fails to compete with the onslaught of information crisscrossing online, leaving their brand of dissemination way too slow, useless even, compared to that runaway train, that is, online communication. And besides, even their own employees, needless to say, are already been passengers of this frantic locomotive because most of them are social media users.

Even greeting cards, which used to be a regular staple in the mailbag, has stayed much too long in our malls and bookstores. And those who bothered to read, out of curiosity most of the time, are the ones giving some sort of justice to an already losing investment. Poets and well-wishers of these archaic mails are a dying lot, which makes you chuckle all the more as far as the effect it does to these empty post offices.

In the countryside, however, some of these offices are still doing their rounds, although most of them are fast becoming extensions of an old government office.

In one town alone, their venerable post office stands static and gaunt in a flood-ridden barangay, with barely a few if not non-existent customers around, exacerbated all the more with that bare number of employees manning the office. And by the looks of it, it could not sustain the interest of the public for too long, much less convincing this same demographic into using their once serviceable delivery.

Availing of the Postal ID is another issue. With a bag of requirements attached to it, much of the process, sad to note, takes away the enthusiasm of having this unnecessary document. A cedula (and a witness to it), 4 copies of ID pictures, 1 pc. documentary stamp from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Barangay Clearance, a card fee, and a notarized application are such inroads an applicant has to hurdle before he can get hold of this ID, while it only takes less than 30 minutes to register on an email account.

The discrepancies are all too glaring, and going to a nearby post office is like visiting a lifeless museum, while you could while away for hours googling on the net---no zip codes to hunt, no sticky stamps to paste, no outside addresses to scribble, just airtime and a mouse click.

"Think back to on (sic) the days when we left home to go to university or work overseas," said a marketing officer for Microsoft's Consumer and Online group for Greater Asia Pacific. "The most cost-effective means to communicate was through letters," he added.

It’s supposed cost-effective slant seem like a distant memory now twice removed from its intended calling, as it goes through some long stretches before it actually communicates via the postal service. Not only does it lag you behind getting your message across, it also leaves you egging for days while the rest of humanity are clicking their messages away at the speed of light.

Whatever happened to that P.O. box is a subject few in today's generation could decipher unless you intend to visit your nearest post office and marvel at its extinction. They look like miniature tombstones vertically positioned like that in some public cemetery a few blocks away from your favorite internet cafe, where your letters could be distributed to a host of online friends on a daily grind. Safekeeping your mails have gone a long way from a tight stainless box into an online "unlimited" bin, with only your liking as a source of confirmation.

But in remote areas where much of the populace is still reeling from the effects of a flashy IPod or a Wi-Fi connection, post offices are here to stay. For now, though. And employees of this once busy department are assured that at the end of the day, letters will keep coming in, as it had been when pen pal communication, at one point, did help strengthen the peso-dollar rate in the country.

And as the art of writing is losing its penmanship on the pages of these letters, so is the very survival of our venerable post offices in the midst of this online explosion of transmitting every imaginable message in the air. It is simply too tall an order for these offices to keep up, much less compete, with the accessibility and fun of online transmission. Unless you're the kind who gives a hoot about posterity the old way, otherwise, you're on your own.