A few weeks ago I was sorting through the copious amounts of junk mail I get every day and a dollar bill slipped out.
Huh?
There was some research company asking for my time to fill out a survey, and they have sent $1 in cold hard cash to return it to them.
Seemed a little weird. What was their motivation? Did they think my time was only worth $1? They spent $0.37 mailing the thing, plus the paper, ink, someone had to fold it and stuff the envelope, etc. Adding another $1 to their costs seemed of dubious value.
Nevertheless I put it on my “To Do” pile (which I would have anyway, a fact you can either choose to believe or not, but $1 isn’t enough to really sway my filtering process).
Then it got buried.
Today I was sorting through more largely-junk mail and out slipped $2 and a note from the same folks asking me to fill out the survey they had sent.
Now my thoughts went like this:
“Who is sending cash through the mail?” “Oh, I bet it’s those people who sent $1 last month.” “Hrm, if I wait until next month will they send $3?”