Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
I have heard that the complaints about the post office are increasing. The Berlin daily “Tagesspiegel” reported 17,000 complaints in October and November alone. Some regions claim that no letters were delivered for weeks in the summer. Even on the outskirts of the capital, there are complaints that deliveries are too infrequent.
You have to say that the prerequisite for being able to deliver a letter is that one has been written. If you now have the feeling that you haven’t received any mail in weeks, this can also be because no one has written to you. That may be sad. But sometimes true.
I haven’t written a letter in ages, so one with ink and fountain pen. That’s because most of the time I don’t have a fountain pen on hand, and when I do have one I don’t have ink.
On the rare occasions when I have both pen and ink, and then I have paper, an envelope, and a stamp…then I still don’t write a letter.
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In most cases this is not a problem, because I can send an SMS, an e-mail or a WhatsApp message. I can also send a message via Signal, Twitter, Instagram or Telegram. It’s exhausting enough to serve all these news services with something to say that very rarely is there anything left for the paper.
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Of course, in my imagination, there is this person that I could be, sitting at his desk, running lines on heavy paper, then putting them in an envelope and taking them to the post office. But this imaginary me is just as far removed from me as the guy who sits comfortably in his armchair and reads a good book for hours. The armchair is there, the book is there – only I’m missing.
Most of the time, I’m hanging over my laptop, hacking my fingers into the keyboard, or staring at my smartphone. I write so few letters that I have no idea what my handwriting would look like. I’m afraid not good. So if you ever got a letter from me, you probably wouldn’t be able to decipher it.
When I get mail, it’s usually not a pleasant one. Something that people still like to send in the mail today are invoices. And if no bill comes, then comes a reminder. And if no reminder comes, then a collection notice comes.
In most cases, going to the mailbox does not put you in a good mood at all. I would actually be very happy to live in a district in Germany where no post arrives for weeks. I think I would even pay for such a consistent non-delivery. Swiss Post should think about such a service. Could be a business model.
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