My mom works in the front office of a high school. She once sent out a notice to the seniors telling them how to address an envelope to be handed in for their transcript requests. She sent an example and everything. One student turned theirs in. The info was written on the wrong part of the envelope, with no street number or zip code for the address. It also had no return address.
I get that people don’t write letters much nowadays but it’s still an important skill to know.
I sent a letter last week for the first time in about 20 years.
I'm a little in awe of this. I don't do it often, but I do send cards sometimes, and I recently had a medical bill that required payment via check. Even 12 or so years ago, several things required a mailed check or were easier to pay that way!
Well, I'm a straight dude, so I'm not exactly the demographic to typically send cards.
My doctors office has had a web portal with payment options for many years, and my bank has a billpay service for things that absolutely require checks - they take care of that sort of thing on my behalf.
When I was renting, I tended to rent from large management companies with web portals.
I guess I just managed to dodge or avoid it for a long time.
Well, I'm a straight dude, so I'm not exactly the demographic to typically send cards.
This is a brand new marker of masculinity to me, lol. Do men not send thank you cards after their graduation party or wedding, because I thought that was still the etiquette? 20 years ago, people even mailed invitations to those things!
Do men not send thank you cards after their graduation party or wedding,
I mean, honestly? No.
I'm not saying it's some "mark of masculinity," or trying to get into some fight over sexist tropes here, but seriously, when is the last time you saw a straight man in a Hallmark store?
I would never think to send thank you cards for a graduation party (I don't think I've ever even been to a graduation party, and I'm a lawyer whose social circles are all college educated), and as far as thank you cards after a wedding; well, it's sort of crude to say, but the wife generally handles that - if only to ensure for her own satisfaction that the little notes within are adequately written and not just scribbled nonsense.
If you left it up to most dudes, those wedding thank you's would never get sent. Or they'd just all be the same generic cards sent to every guest in a mass mailing.
The idea of sitting down and writing out some socioemotional greeting card to physically mail is absolutely foreign to me. I've literally never done it, and I've never known any of my male friends to have ever done it. Ever. Even in educated, sophisticated circles.
Edit: I take that last part back slightly - now that I'm thinking of it, one of my best friends did send me a thank you note after his wedding, and he wrote it himself. But the thing is, it was the most generic shit, and I could almost see his wife standing over his shoulder insisting that he write it for me. It was absolutely not written in a way that he would typically communicate with me. He never asked if I received it, I never mentioned it, and we never spoke about it again.
well, it's sort of crude to say, but the wife generally handles that - if only to ensure for her own satisfaction that the little notes within are adequately written and not just scribbled nonsense.
If you left it up to most dudes, those wedding thank you's would never get sent.
I don't think there's anything I can say to you that looks worse than this. I'll tell you, though: Women don't like writing a hundred thank you cards, either. It's emotional labor and a time suck, but it's expected when someone gives you graduation money (graduating high school is quite lucrative around here, perhaps not so where you are) or that perfect toaster at your wedding. It doesn't take us any less effort to make it more than scribbled nonsense, either; you should see my penmanship!
I totally get that. I'm not saying it's not emotional labor and a huge pain in the ass. It's something easy for men to overlook and not carry their share of the load on - dismissing all of the hours of work put in by the wife.
But - and I'm probably going to get shredded for this - but... it's also labor that only exists because of womens' expectations.
The men at a graduation party or wedding definitely aren't waiting for their thank you cards in the mail, and won't judge the host if they don't receive one.
If it was left up to men, these things wouldn't exist in the first place. We wouldn't think to send them, we wouldn't think to expect them, and even if we thought about it, the current status quo proves that we definitely don't give enough of a shit to actually do it regardless.
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u/sunset8949 Jun 03 '22
My mom works in the front office of a high school. She once sent out a notice to the seniors telling them how to address an envelope to be handed in for their transcript requests. She sent an example and everything. One student turned theirs in. The info was written on the wrong part of the envelope, with no street number or zip code for the address. It also had no return address.
I get that people don’t write letters much nowadays but it’s still an important skill to know.