because no one seems to know

I work in a mail center, and it astounds me daily how little people know about mail and what to do with it. We've gotten packages with no name or department on them, and had to educate countless people on how to properly address a letter. So as a service to any of you out there who are clueless (like most of the people at my school), here are some instructions.

1. Don't address your letter with anything other than black or blue ink. This is a soft rule, but please avoid pinks, yellows, or other pastel colors. Almost all mail is run through an automatic machine, and if you want your letter to get there as fast as possible, make it easy for the machine to read it.

2. If you're writing to a place that gets a lot of mail, such as a college or university, address it to the person using their real name. We get a lot of cute nicknames that make it ten times harder to figure out who the hell it goes to. I know you want to be creative and make someone smile, but save it for the inside of the envelope.

3. Please, for the love of the USPS, leave a forwarding address. Also let them know that you're gone and want your mail. We had a lot of students who moved off campus that had their tax returns sent back because we didn't have addresses for them.

Later we'll talk about how to properly address an envelope, because a girl was just in here asking her friend how to do it. Yikes...