I’ve had it!
Some of you may feel my pain while others will say that I’m the problem.
I’m not normally a rant blogger but occasionally I hit a breaking point on something and I just have to put it out there. Today’s topic: PAPER
My Office
My office has two desks in it, one for me, and one for my wife. Each desk has a chair. Currently, one of the chairs is covered in paper. I have folders and envelopes cluttering my desk. I just uncovered a form that needs to be physically mailed in…a week or two ago. I have two documents on my printer that also need to be physically mailed in.
This is one of many stacks of paper in the office.
The thought of going through that amount of paper is exhausting. And even if we found something important and we decide to keep it, we now have to find a place to store it. Once we store it, we have to remember where we put it.
The cleaning service that we use hasn’t been into the office for months because there is nothing they can do about this madness. It’s cluttered, it’s messy and the biggest source of the clutter is paper.
Much of this is my “fault” but it’s also the product of an old way of doing things that should be retired immediately, if not sooner.
My Computer
My computer is meticulously organized.
My files are available at any time, from any geographic location with an internet connection, thanks to Evernote, Dropbox and Gmail.
If I am looking for something, I have a convenient search bar that can sift through my documents for individual words or phrases. When I need to get information from one place to another, I don’t need a stamp, I don’t need to walk to a mailbox or a post office, I simply hit “Send.”
If, by chance, my files get out of hand and my Desktop is a mess, the physical space I inhabit looks exactly the same as if my computer were organized. I can store the equivalent of billions of pieces of paper on the computer without my office looking the least bit cluttered.
My Point
It’s 2011 and I’m fed up with services that can’t get their act together. We have ample methods for avoiding the waste associated with mailing paper documents around the country, and a fax machine is not the answer.
It is totally absurd for me to have to print a document, put it in an envelope and pay to have it physically transported across the country, wasting paper, fuel and time, when an online form could make the process instantaneous and waste-free. It is equally absurd to fax something; maybe while I’m out buying a fax machine for the one document per month I need to send, I’ll also pick up a VCR and a few cassette tapes.
The world has progressed to a point where we are empowered to stop this madness using technology.
To all of the agencies out there, government or otherwise, please hire a web developer for the 1-10 hours it would take to create an online form and stop mailing things to me!
And if you are a business of any kind that is considering using physical paper mail, please stop and reconsider.