Does Anyone Remember Postcards?

There was a time when every vacation included at least one small ritual.

You would walk into a souvenir shop, spin one of those postcard racks around a few times, and look for the perfect picture. Maybe it was a beach, a mountain, a famous building, or some slightly faded photo of the town you were visiting.

Then you would buy a stamp, write a few quick lines on the back, and drop it in a mailbox.

“Having a great time. Weather is beautiful. See you next week.”

That was about as deep as most postcards got.

And yet, somehow, they meant something.

Today, of course, the postcard has mostly disappeared. We take a picture with our phone and send it instantly. Or we post it. Or we upload 17 vacation photos before we have even finished breakfast.

It is faster, easier, and more practical. But despite my love of technology, there is, or was, something cool about postcards.

I was reminded of that years ago during a conversation with a co-worker named Steve. We were talking about how nobody sends postcards anymore. Everything had become instant. Why wait a week or two for a postcard when you could send a photo in two seconds?

I happened to be leaving for ten days’ vacation the next day.

Almost jokingly, I said, “I’ll send you a postcard.”

So I did. Actually, I sent him two or three.

When I got back, he laughed because he had not received a postcard in years. That should have been the end of it.

Instead, something funny happened.

The next time someone in our department went on vacation or traveled to a tradeshow, they sent Steve a postcard to his work address. 

Then someone else did. Then another.

Before long, it became an unofficial office tradition. Nobody announced it. Nobody organized it. There was no memo, no meeting, and no corporate team-building exercise. It simply happened because people thought it was fun.

Within a couple of years, Steve must have had 200 postcards stuffed into one of his work desk drawers. They came from beaches, cruise ships, ski resorts, little towns, major cities, famous tourist attractions and scenic spots, and places most of us had never been. Every vacation became another opportunity to add to the collection.

The best part was that it spread. It was not just our department anymore. Even our department vice-president got into it. Then people in our European offices started sending postcards. Then our Asian offices joined in too.

Steve’s desk drawer became a miniature atlas of the world.

Australia. Dubai. Egypt. Brazil. Germany. Japan. Singapore. England. Places that seemed impossibly far away from our office somehow ended up represented in one collection of postcards.

Imagine trying to explain that to someone today.

“No, they weren’t for his family. They were just for Steve.”

“Why?”

“Because it was fun.”

And it was.

Every new vacation or tradeshow meant another surprise arriving in the mail. Nobody knew exactly when the postcard would show up or from where. Sometimes it arrived while the person was still away. Other times it would appear after they had already been back at work for a week.

That delay was part of the charm. The postcards themselves were not especially profound. Most said some version of “having a great time” or “wish you were here,” or a little tidbit about the place pictured. Some probably had inside jokes. Others were simply signed with a name.

The point was never the message. It was the effort.

Someone had taken five minutes out of their vacation to think about a co-worker back at the office. They found a postcard, bought a stamp, figured out where to mail it, and sent it across the country or halfway around the world.

There was something surprisingly personal about that.

I love being able to send a photo from my phone. I am not pretending I want to go back to waiting two weeks for everything. Instant communication is useful, convenient, and sometimes wonderful. And besides, where would you find a rack filled with postcards nowadays anyway? 

But instant messages also disappear quickly.

A postcard sticks around. It sits on a desk or gets pinned to a bulletin board. 

Or, in Steve’s case, it fills an entire desk drawer with memories collected one vacation or tradeshow city at a time. Today, we can share dozens of vacation photos before lunch. 

But I wonder how many of them people remember a month later.

Steve may still have that drawer full of postcards somewhere. Two hundred little pieces of cardboard, each one representing not just a vacation, but a person who took a few minutes to think of someone else while they were far from home.

Looking back, it was never really about the postcards.

It was about a small, fun tradition that made the workplace feel a little more human.