The Hidden Cost of Credit Card Offers
The paper and ink wasted on unwanted credit card, mortgage and other financial offers is terrible. But needing to shred these things is an imposition that just doesn’t seem fair. And add to it my idiocy and it becomes intolerable.
Every week or so we spend way too much time shredding papers that contain too much information about us due to fears of identity theft. Tonight I decided to get more efficient about the destruction, even though I think all of those marketers should pay me a fee for the time I must spend destroying their advertisements.
I should note that I was a Boy Scout for several years and consider myself to be a decent camper with “fire knowledge”. Are you tracking yet? I decided to run down to my neighbor’s place and borrow his fire pit to burn all of this paper, rather than spend two hours shredding stuff. Apparently I also decided to throw out everything I’ve ever learned about fire management and proceeded to dump the entire pile into the pit and set it ablaze. The problem is, I ended up with a big smoke pit rather than a raging fire because there was no oxygen to the inner parts of the pile. So instead of saving time I’ve been wasting time churning the pile to make sure that everything burns. I could have shredded everything twice by now. Not to mention that I probably inhaled enough flaming ink to give me more cancer than my smoking and crappy diet combined. Is any of this my fault? No! First, this is America so nothing is directly my fault. And second, if I didn’t get drenched with ads containing too much of my personal information I wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
I wonder what would happen if I sent them a bill for my time? What about the medical bills resulting from my idiocy accidentally inhaling the fumes? I wonder.
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