everyone's mail but mine

I just mailed out some books the other day, and I couldn't believe how much postage is costing me these days. I used to think that people who charged anything more than $3 for shipping a book were ripping me off, but now I know better. Even at the media mail rate, you can barely ship a book out for less than than $3, unless you are somehow getting your mailing envelops for free.

I guess this is a sign of the times, what with the decline of written personal correspondence due to the popularity of email. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the overall service of the mail has also gone down in recent years. Maybe it is just the town that I live in, but I have a post office box, and they can't seem to get anything right. I have had several clients who sent me checks that I never received in my box. And it seems that every time I check my box, there is someone else's mail in it. So who is getting all of my mail?

Based on the amount of mail that I get addressed to someone else, you would think that I had a community mailbox. The funny thing is that even though I only use the box for business, I get all kinds of misdirected correspondence. I get credit card offers, insurance bills, paychecks and tax returns, forwarded mail from other post office boxes, birthday cards, and even lingerie catalogs - all addressed to other people. What's next? Quinceanera invitations? Bar-Mitzvah announcements? Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes notices? Some well-concealed cash would be nice.

It's fairly obvious that the raise in the price of postage hasn't done anything to improve the service in my area. I guess they're just trying to keep up with inflation and the rising cost of gas. Every monopoly has its day...but what business owner in his right mind would want to take on this one?