Getting Stuck

A friend of ours recently mailed out 50 invitations, each envelope affixed with a freshly bought 22-cent commemorative stamp. Within a few days 17 of the envelopes were returned to her for lack of proper postage. It seems that somewhere along the line, before the envelopes reached the post office’s canceling machines, their stamps had fallen off. With no way to prove that she had in fact used the proper postage, our friend was out $3.74, and better luck next time.

For postal purposes, a stamp is only as good as the gum on its back. If you lick ‘em, you should be able to stick ‘em, with some expectation that they will stay stuck as the mail goes on its appointed rounds. Lately, though, some stamps seem incapable of adhering. Sometimes the gum on a stamp gives up even before an envelope is mailed, provoking desperate measures. We note, for example, an increasing number of letters arriving at the office with their stamps held on by transparent tape.

The postal service is a generally admirable organization. It delivers well over 100 billion pieces of mail a year, most of them to the right addresses and most of them within reasonable periods. It also enjoys revenues of about $30 billion. Surely it can invest a tiny fraction of that to develop a gum that will keep a stamp stuck firmly in place so that its patrons won’t be charged twice-over to send the same piece of mail.