Stuffing Envelopes

Prior to deciding on becoming a data entry operator I desperately searched for any kind of job I could do from home. One thing that caught my eye and sounded easy enough for me to do was stuffing envelopes. The phrase kept popping up whenever I was searching for work from home jobs or something similar. I thought I would give it a try so I started looking for a legitimate company that needed some envelopes stuffed in exchange for direct deposit cash payment into my bank account. I gave up after a few months because I never located a genuine business offering the service I wanted. In the end I didn’t stuff one envelope and I was left feeling as if the whole thing was a scam or something.

I had imagined answering a knock on the door, signing for a large package, going back inside and excitedly emptying the contents. I thought there would be sheets of paper, or documents of varying sizes and colours, along with a giant stack of manila envelopes. I was going to arrange the stacks of promotional material in logical order as to make it easy to grab one from each pile before stuffing it all into one of the envelopes. At the end of the day I would be so tired from stuffing envelopes I would call out for pizza and eat it in front of the tv with a cold beer. The next morning I would get up to find more envelopes to stuff and more money in my account than the day before. I’d be working from home and happy to be doing so.

I probably couldn’t have been further from the truth. Instead of working from home as an envelope stuffer I was on a stupid wild goose chase and not making any money as a consequence. The worst thing about it is I thought I would’ve been really good at stuffing envelopes. I was hoping it would be a legitimate job opportunity for me and I would be able to set up a secure and financially beneficial career for myself. After searching for half a year I didn’t find an envelope to stuff or a company willing to provide any work resembling what I was looking for. Working from home was to remain a seemingly unattainable dream for a little while longer.

I never sent any money or signed up for any program but I have read some alarming articles relating to this subject. One particular scam, if I remember correctly, involved potential job seekers sending money to receive a list of companies who, when contacted, could arrange work stuffing envelopes. When people got the list and started contacting representatives of the published companies they were disappointed to learn that none of them were offering work to people who wanted to stuff envelopes for a living. With that particular scam, no one ended up being able to stuff an envelope but the individuals selling the phantom list were making big bucks at the expense of their victims.

Another scam which is popular, apparently, is the one where people send away for a kit which they think is going to give away the secret of how to become a successful envelope stuffer. Instead of learning how to make a legitimate home-based business for themselves, they learn how to perpetuate the scam by starting their own website selling the same information that conned them. I guess some people become so jaded they actually go about ripping off other innocent job seekers. If you want to work from home stuffing envelopes you’ll just have to buy the stationary yourself and hope for the best.

I’ve never met someone who stuffs envelopes for a living, have you? I imagine an envelope stuffer would say something like this. “I’ve been stuffing envelopes for about ten years now and I love it. There isn’t another job that I’d prefer to do. I get to work from home and make lots of money. Apart from the odd paper cut there are no downsides to this business. If I wasn’t stuffing envelopes I don’t know what I would do. It’s the sort of profession you can do for life. Once you’ve stuffed an envelope and got paid for it, it’s hard to go back to working in the mines or something like that. You certainly know you’re alive when you fill an envelope with some kind of important document or promotional material.”

People who stuff envelopes are usually volunteers working for a political campaign or the proprietors of a small home based business sending out promotional material to promote their products. Companies with ongoing envelope stuffing concerns usually have massive envelope stuffing machines that take care of that sort of thing. They don’t usually hire employees to do something that can easily be automated. Maybe there were enterprises two hundred years ago that needed to utilise the services of specialists who could stuff envelopes efficiently but probably not so much in the current era. These times have gone and are not likely to return any time soon!

So I will never taste the joy associated with stuffing an envelope in a professional capacity. I will never feel what it’s like to stuff an envelope full of documents and get paid for the privilege. I will never fully understand what it was like back in the old days when companies would hire teams of individuals to sit in a dark room stuffing envelopes all day for loose change and pieces of stale crumpet. On one hand I feel a bit ripped off because of all the websites that look legitimate but don’t deliver in the end, but on the other hand I couldn’t care less. After all, I am now a successful data entry operator working from home without a worry in the world. I would’ve liked to have spent at least one week stuffing envelopes just to get an idea of the level of excitement experienced by those lucky enough to have got the chance to do it.