3 January 2009

When you're in the mail room of your building and you're chatting with a neighbor and see a penny sticking out from under his shoe, do you say,

"Excuse me, you're standing on my penny."

Or do you shift your weight and position so he moves back and then you dive down for it?

Or do you wait for (encourage) the conversation to come to a close and then retrieve it when he can no longer see it nor you?

Sure, the polite thing would be to say,

"I think you dropped a penny, can I pick it up for you?" and then reach down, pick it up, and hand it over to your horrified neighbor who doesn't want it any way because he doesn't blog about finding money and finds pennies useless and dirty. And he doesn't want to insult you by saying,

"Oh, please, keep it for yourself," because that would be like tipping a guy a nickel. So I think the truly polite thing would be something else.

What do you think I did?

Total haul for the day = .01

TOTAL to date = $16.45