I like to think of myself as one of those live-and-let-live types (my husband probably disagrees), but today I went out of my way to report someone who wasn’t doing their job properly. Here’s what happened:
On Friday night, a friend and I went for a walk by the beach. As we were making our way home, we saw a man with several stacks of the local newspaper – The Peach Arch News – in a baby stroller (obviously, his means of delivering them). I didn’t think much of it since the local paper is published on Sundays, Wednesday and Fridays. In fact, I went over to him to ask if he had an extra copy of the paper, since the delivery of it to our home is unreliable, and I covet the Friday edition for its grocery store flyers.
Anyhow, after the man gave me a copy of the paper, my friend and I walked away, but also started to look at him a bit more closely. He was stopped by a large garbage can (the kind they have in public parks) and was cutting the bundle strap on each bundle of papers and was stuffing the papers into the garbage can. When one garbage can was full, he would push his stroller another 20 metres to the next garbage can and cram that can full of papers.
As we kept walking, what this guy was doing started to bug us on so many levels. First of all, it's dishonest. The newspaper publisher is paying this person to deliver the paper to a certain set of houses, and he’s not doing that. Secondly, it's wasteful. He was stuffing the newspapers into the garbage can, so they weren’t even being recycled. And finally, I’m one of those people who look forward to my local newspaper, and if this guy were my carrier (he’s not), I would be pretty pissed at what was happening to the paper which I wanted to read.
So this morning, I snitched on the guy. I called the circulation desk of the local paper, and left a message with my story, along with my name and number in case they wanted more details. I didn’t feel great about ratting out the guy (OK, maybe I felt just a little great), but I know if I hadn’t done this, it would have annoyed me every time I went to look on my doorstep for the local newspaper and it wasn’t there, and I would have wished I reported this guy when I had the chance.
You did the right thing. The guy was cheating his employer and you. Advertisers pay for that audience (we don't need a Communications degree to know that). Besides ABC Nightline had this amazing feature last week on 2 people who mastered the art of coupon maximizing. It will be on their website.
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