Once or twice a year the phone company prints up tens of thousands of pointless books that no one wants, and no one reads, loads them into trucks to be driven throughout the city, then pays someone to throw them on our front stoops to molder and rot until whoever the apartment do-gooder is finally takes pity on the disintegrating wretches and hauls them into the recycling bin.
It's a scheme so inefficient in its time and money-draining stubbornness, it could only be perpetuated by the hand of municipal government. (Is it? Someone check on that.) It's like a massive over-funded jobs-building program designed by Samuel Beckett, meant as an excuse to illustrate that someone is doing something with this pile of money they happen to have on hand. Maybe setting that cash on fire would be more efficient, because at least then the end result wouldn't be giving me an unwanted job in a depressing waste factory hauling crates of nothingness back into the landfill.
My friend Heather Vandenengel has been taking pictures of the sad piles of waste around the city in their varying states of entropy. "The phonebooks come in a bag that says I'M A KEEPER when no one ever keeps them, ever," she told me. "I want to call the companies that advertise in them and ask why they would ever do that, and see maybe if only old people businesses still waste advertising money on them because old people are the only ones who could possibly still use them." I don't even think old people use them anymore, because, as she points out, "the only thing more antiquated than a phone that is only a phone, is a whole print book of just phone numbers."
Still though, she says, "I was also considering for awhile taking a part-time job I found on Craig's List for delivering phonebooks." No doubt! There's good money in that shit. You should jump on it.
Photos by Heather Vandenengel
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6 comments:
This is basically paying people to distribute 5 pounds of garbage on people's doorsteps.
I was always understood that the phone company was required to distribute these.
I could be talking though my hole though, obviously.
Nice photos.
I used a phonebook the other day, right before I went back in time with Bill & Ted.
I should add that I wanted to take that job so I could find out what the equation is for how many phonebooks to leave per stoop. Like [(Number of phonebooks an apt actually needs x 4) + a few more for good measure)] Except that would still always equal zero :(
i've wondered about this for years. anyone have a spare second to google it on up re: who pays for this shit? i do, but i won't. i also think it's awesome that the yellow pages started a website that is only slightly less relevant than the actual yellow pages.
used to be a money-maker, like writing for papers and trade journals.
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