It came in the mail

Even in today's age of high technology most correspondence between you and the businesses still use the United States Postal Service. Even in a lousy economy like we have right now I still get mail that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Both my wife and myself received letters from our bank recently to inform us that a branch was closing. The letter went on to give us the next few closest branches that could handle our banking needs. Two things stood out about this letter that made me scratch our head. To start with, this information did not have any strings attached to it. I did not need to call to verify the closing of this branch so why could this not have posted on there website or even sent in an email. In fact even posting a sign on this branches door as the bank closed would only have inconvenienced a small few who for whatever reason did not know of the closing. The second thing that confused me was that the branch that was closing was approximately three hundred miles from my house in another state. Why the bank decided that it was imperative to let me know that I could no longer make a six hour drive to deposit my money is still a mystery to me. But now, after probably wasting a dollar or so of their money to send me this letter, I know that I should not use twelve gallons of fuel to withdrawal that twenty dollars I need to go the movies. (well, maybe forty dollars since movies are really, really expensive.)
A second letter I received recently was from my Gas company. It wanted to let me know that If I didn't schedule an appointment to have my meter read, my gas would be shut off. It said that I needed to contact them by 1911264275. Obviously I made the call as soon as possible but again I was generally confused by this letter. Did this ten digit number correspond with a date that I should have know but did not? I tried several different approaches to reading this number but I could not determine exactly when I was supposed to contact them by. Maybe all the people that have been getting laid off were proofreaders. Is it really that hard to make a letter sent to a customer readable? I guess it is.