I do not usually do much planning ahead for these posts. They often start with a feeling of “I should really post something” and I figure something out from there.

But not today.

I started laying the groundwork for this post nearly two months ago when I saw a flier for gutter cleaning services jammed in our screen door. Last year, it seemed like these fliers came on a daily basis and quickly found their way into our recycle bin.

So this year I decided to collect the fliers, both to see how many we received and to see if it was just the same guy wasting another piece of paper on us over and over again. I enlisted the help of my roommates, who were easily up the task of “hey, don’t throw these away.” I wrote the date we received each one on the top of the flier and shoved them in a drawer in the kitchen.

Here’s the stack as of May 19:

There are only eight of them, which is many fewer than I thought there would be. Two in March (23, 29), four in April (6, 12, 23, 29) and two so far in May (3, 10).

Because I was storing them for later, I never bothered to read any of them. It turns out they hold a few interesting nuggets. The best, by far, is at the bottom of the two full-sheet fliers. They are the same fliers with different days for when they will be doing the work in our neighborhood. The fine print reads: “Rip-off alert: Nate’s gutter cleaning is a disgruntled employee; fired for dishonest business practices[.]”

Who knew there was so much drama in the gutter cleaning industry? I quickly shuffled through my stack of fliers and was sad to find I did not have any from this apparently dastardly gutter cleaner.

Punctuation is not a big trend in the industry, though it looks as if there is a master flier creator somewhere who ensures they feature 96.2 percent of the exact same phrasing. If you find of these slipped in your door, let me save you the time of reading it and give you the highlights:

-“If you have not had your gutters already cleaned (or cleaned yet)” — found in six of my eight
-A clogged gutter “can lead to water damage to your home’s interior” — again, six of the eight
-A checkbox for which of the three or four cleaning packages you would like
-The individual –rarely a company–to whom you should make the check payable
-Instructions for taping the flier to your door by some early hour

You should also be prepared to mentally insert your own punctuation as the template is lacking in periods and the use of possessives.

Only one of them is proud to point out “illegal workers are not used in this business.” Most of them took the time to get fancy with the use of at least one and sometimes up to THREE clipart images.

Of the eight fliers, only two of them are duplicates. As mentioned before, the two large fliers are essentially the same. I want to give special recognition to the services of Mr. Cruz, who gave me fliers on March 29 and May 10. The use of two different colors really added to the color diversity of this collection.

They are also the only fliers to include an enthusiastic “Thanks!” at the bottom.

No Mr. Cruz, thank you! But sorry, we don’t need the gutters cleaned.