Hoarding restaurant newsletters

Published 9:53 pm Thursday, February 9, 2012

It’s kind of a telling sign when an analysis of your personal email inbox shows that roughly 65 percent of the emails you receive daily are restaurant newsletters.

If someone were to have to purge my account due to my untimely passing, clearing my inbox of newsletters from Popeye’s, Olive Garden, Dr. Pepper, and a long list of other restaurants and companies would be like the pilot of episode for a show like “Digital Hoarders.”

Much like the people who fascinate me on the television program “Hoarders,” I’ve realized that I may have a problem with digital hoarding. I tend to save every email about food that I get.

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Given my new, gluten-free diet, many would ask “Why are you keeping these emails? It’s not like you can eat most of the stuff they advertise in the newsletters.” Much like the hoarders on the show, I can only respond, “I may use that someday.”

The only thing I’m certain that sets me apart from people who have Tupperware and cooking utensils stacked to their ceilings is that I don’t actually have a problem. I can stop receiving these tempting restaurant newsletters any time I want.

So what if the never-ending pasta bowl in coming back to Olive Garden soon? I’m not interested. And if Popeye’s wants to tease me with its new garlic pepper Wicked Chicken. I’m not falling for it.

But then again, someone did go through all the trouble of laying out these newsletters and, as a designer, it’s probably rude not to at least look at them and save them to review for a few days. You know, for graphic design purposes.

Once again, I don’t have a problem hoarding restaurant newsletters, I just like strengthening my resolve to get healthy and avoid so many of the deep-fried, double-battered, creamy-ranch-dressing-on-the-side sensations these kinds of restaurants are trying to throw my way.

In the end, though, I guess those of us with a problem don’t know it until we have the digital equivalent of a two dump trucks full of restaurant newsletters piled up in our inboxes, with a small group of loved ones huddled around saying, “These newsletters are not love!”

So I guess a part of curing myself of my restaurant newsletter hoarding is to start slow, admit that I have a problem.

My name is Troy Cooper and I am a restaurant newsletter hoarder. I know more about up-and-coming fast food items than any one diabetic should. They are just newsletters. They are not love. They are only a constant reminder of why my triglycerides are skyrocketing. They are not my friends.

As if diabetes weren’t enough to contend with, now this. But, Suffolkians, this is one habit I can kick. Now, where’s that “unsubscribe” button?