How I Put an End to Those Annoying Circulars

I’m sure some people look forward to receiving them each week, but I’m not one of them. They creep into my mail box each week and quickly get tossed into my recycling bin. What are these menacing items? They are the ever annoying paper circulars. Some how these dastardly inserts have found their way out of the Sunday papers and into my post office box each week.

For me, it’s not really important to know that “Bottom round roast is going for $2.69 lb” or to see the details of “a missing teen from Dallas, Texas.” While I wish the missing teen a safe return to her family, I’m likely not going to see her in New Bedford. Also, I love to use coupons, but the ones that come in the weekly circulars seem to target items that I really have no use for. Besides, do we really need 50 cents off of Spam? The taste of this mystery meat sells itself!

Finally having enough, I figured out how to put a restraining order on these circulars – but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back up a few days and let me tell the tale of how I learned about the source of these circulars.

In line at the post office recently, I saw an elderly woman march over to one of the service windows and asked the postal worker “Please stop sending these to me. I don’t want them.” The postal worker replied, “Ma’am, we don’t send them to you. It’s the Standard Times. We just deliver them.” It was obvious from the postal worker’s tone, that this was not the first disgruntled person wanting to put a stop to these unrelenting circulars. Unsatisfied and without a word, the elderly lady turned and stormed out of the post office. I couldn’t help but feel that she was not alone in this struggle to save some trees and put an end to this mail box injustice.

Armed with this valuable source of knowledge, I visited the Standard Times website today and found a number to their subscription services at 1-800-445-7482. I called the number and after battling their automated phone service, I finally got to an employee. I immediately shouted, “On behalf of disgruntled elderly ladies everywhere and to save the rain forest, I demand that you stop sending circulars to my home!” She begged and pleaded with me to reconsider, but I wouldn’t have it. As a last resort, she tried to convince me that with every circular delivered an angel gets his wings, but I informed her that I cared more about trees than angels and the price of bottom round roast.

Finally, after a few key strokes, she informed me that I was off the circular list. With just a few minutes of my time I saved pounds of unwanted paper being delivered to my door each year. Let the angels work for their wings.

Edit: I’ve learned that there are also the Red Plum circulars that get delivered to New Bedford residents. To stop them from being delivered fill out their unsubscribe form here: http://www.redplum.com/mailing-list.aspx.