In high school, one of my jobs was working for a Farmers Insurance Agent. I’d work from 4-7pm a few days a week in his office.
When I’d arrive his assistant would hand me reams and reams of paper printed from the dot matrix printer. My job had three parts.
1. Tear off the sides of the dot matrix printer paper. Tear each letter from the next.
2. Fold.
3. Stuff and lick the envelope.
For this I made $7.00 an hour.
While I became adept at not ripping the paper during the “tearing” process, I became a pro at the Z-Fold. I found an uncanny ability to fold the letter on the first try so that the address would show through the envelope window. There was none of this “make a soft S & smush the paper” nonsense. It was a fully committed fold – in the days before stationary came with little guidemarks along the side.
I folded thousands of sales letters. I own the Z-Fold.
(Photo courtesy of EmilieP on Flickr.)
The Z-Fold
