Postal Guidelines

Today I only worked at the theater for a couple of hours, then had to make my way to Downtown Oakland where I had promised to help stuff envelopes for the Foundation that I work/volunteer for. They have a big event coming up next month, just had the invitations printed, and I was going in today to get them ready to be sent out.

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was that the invitations were square in shape, and they had already placed 37 cent postage on most of them. I mentioned to my friend, Jim (the boss) that square shape envelopes require extra postage. I learned when I had bought square shaped gift cards a few years ago. We looked it up on usps.com and found out that it required an extra $.12 cents. So Jim went to the post office (with a sample invitation to show a postal worker, just to make sure) and came back with a few rolls of $.23 cent stamps. (he got extra, in case the invitations weighed more)

Mind you, we're working with over 300 invitations here.

So, we began putting the extra stamps on every envelope.

Then, another thought occurs to me: The RSVP cards (which will also be used to send in donations) were also square in shape. They weren't planning on putting postage on these envelopes until I brought up the point that most people who send these in will only use $.37 cent stamps, and they may not be delivered correctly.

It was a good point, and in the end, we decided it best to go out and buy more stamps to put on all of the RSVP envelopes.

Back to the post office!

When Jim came back, he was sorry to say that the only $.50 cent stamps that they had were in sheets that were not self-adhesive.

WHAT?!

I'd like to know WHY it is that in this day and age they still sell sheets of stamps that you have to tear aparts, and *lick*. I'm sure it's much most cost effective to produce, but.... let me tell you.... I spent hours tearing apart, licking and affixing stamps this afternoon.

BLECH

Self-sticking stamps are the way to go.

So that's your postage lesson of the day: square envelopes require extra postage, and beware of non-self-adhesive stamps.