The Price of Bending Over

I want to do extensive studies on people picking up change on the ground. I wonder how most people decide whether or not the change is worth bending down to pick up.

There are obviously the people that will pick it up regardless of value. Sacajawea dollars, buffalo nickels and tarnished pennies are all identified with the same level of enthusiasm. Ironically, I assume most of these people to be old women, most of whom should avoid bending down when not necessary.

Then there are people like me who are first stricken with a sense of laziness and the feeling that it’s not worth the effort of stopping walking and bending over to retrieve some small fraction of a dollar. Then the second guessing comes. “C’mon, it’s free money. Put it in a jar. It’ll add up eventually.” At this point, if it’s a quarter, I pick it up, even if I have to backtrack the few steps I’ve taken since I first noticed it. Less than a quarter, I continue to ponder. Dimes and nickels are mostly insignificant, but often I’ll grab them just to put my mind at ease. Pennies I clearly don’t need, but sometimes the whole “lucky penny” superstition hits me. And even though I’m not superstitious, I have irrational thoughts of getting angry at myself if something unfortunate were to happen later that day and I had to think back to when I didn’t pick up the penny. So yes, I pick up pennies. And I put them in a jar. And they add up. About 100 of them equals a dollar.

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