It's My Bill in a Box

As soon as I thought of this title, I immediately thought of this: Dick in a Box. I'm sure most people have seen this Justin Timberlake skit from Saturday Night Live this past Christmas, but if you haven't, and you're not offended by off-color language, it's really hilarious.

Anyway...this post isn't about an Emmy-winning Saturday Night Live digital short, it's about my cell phone bill. My cell phone bill from AT&T, that came to me in not an envelope, but a BOX. A Priority Mail box no less. It cost them $4.60 to send me my bill, which I find a little bit ridiculous. So here's a little lesson for everyone:

Here is a cell phone bill:

Here is a cell phone bill on steroids. Any questions?

Well, maybe just a couple. The first one being, is it really necessary to spend $4.60 and kill three trees just to send me my cell phone bill? Why is it so big, you ask? Well, because they insist on listing every single incoming and outgoing phone call AND text message individually, of course. I have a teenager, and an almost-teenager. Although I must admit, the almost-teenager doesn't have much to do with the size of this bill. I will say, thank goodness since Cingular has been taken over by AT&T, they've come up with a family unlimited texting plan, where we all get unlimited texting for $29.99 a month. In my house, this is a bargain. How many text messages did Danielle have last month? *Drumroll* 9,091!! Yes, almost 10,000 text messages in one month! I realize those are both incoming and outgoing texts, but holy crap.

So me being me, I decided to do some math. I like math actually, as long as it's not geometry. Just keep your damn triangles away from me, and we'll all be fine.

Basing my calculations on a 30-day month, there are 720 hours in one month. Subtract 7 hours a day (this is an average, a little less on weekdays, more on weekends) for sleeping, which is 210 hours, bringing our total down to 510 hours. I also subtracted the hours a day she spends at school (5 days a week x 4 weeks), which is 140 hours a month, bringing the total hours down to 370. 370 hours a month when she is not sleeping or in class. 370 hours is 22,200 minutes. Divide that number by 9091, and you get 2.44197558. Yes, that's an average of one incoming or outgoing text message every 2.44 minutes that she's awake or not in class. Is it just me, or does that seem insane? I realize that a lot of them are just "ok" or "lol" or whatever, and that she can send about 30 one-word messages in 60 seconds, but come on.

In any case, I called customer service and said that I didn't want them killing three trees every month just to send me my bill. I already pay the bill online, I can see it online, and I see no point in getting a big box of paper every month. The idiot lovely customer service rep stammered that I should go to my account online, and check some box to opt out of the paper bill. I hung up the phone, went straight to the computer, and did just that. I feel like calling Al Gore now and telling him that I've just done my part to save the environment.