Correspondence Regarding Junk Mail Stack
No one requested it. Everyone works around it. The stack has seniority.
Correspondence Regarding Junk Mail Stack
To: Current Household Residents From: This Letter Re: The Stack Status: Third Notice
You know the stack. You placed the stack. You have walked past the stack approximately forty times since placing it.
This letter concerns the operational norms that have developed around the stack's presence, none of which were agreed upon in advance and all of which are now fully in effect.
On the Matter of Temporary
The stack was described as temporary at the time of its formation. This description was accurate for a period estimated at one to three days. That period has concluded.
The stack is no longer temporary. The stack has become the reference point against which other objects in the area are positioned. It is, by any reasonable measure, furniture.
We ask that residents stop describing the stack as temporary. The stack finds this characterizing language disrespectful given its tenure.
On the Matter of the Workaround
Residents have developed an informal protocol for navigating around the stack. This protocol includes a slight sideways step near the kitchen counter and a preference for approaching the refrigerator from the left.
New residents learn this protocol before they learn where the towels are kept.
The workaround has become the real system. The stack is aware of this. The stack considers it appropriate.
On the Matter of Guests
A guest recently attempted to discard several items from the stack. The guest believed, reasonably, that unwanted mail should be recycled.
Residents intervened. Not to preserve any specific piece of mail. No one can name a specific piece of mail. Residents intervened because the stack's organization, however arbitrary, had achieved a kind of territorial legitimacy.
The guest was reminded that the stack has its own logic. The guest did not understand. The guest was not expected to understand.
Closing
The stack will remain until formally addressed. Formal addressing requires a free afternoon and an emotional readiness that has not yet materialized.
Familiarity outranks correction. The behavior has happened twice.
This correspondence does not require a response. It is, itself, part of the stack now.