Day 27

Day 27: Brooklyn, NY & Manhattan, NY

$1.67 found

Jefferson St. and St. Nichols Ave.: $0.01

14th St. A Platform: $1.31 (4x quarters, 1 penny, 2 dimes and 2 nickels.  They were extremely dirty and slushy)

A Train uptown: $0.01

8th Ave. and 36th St.: $0.01

341 West 38th: $0.01

8th Ave. Shake Shack: $0.12

42nd St. Downtown ACE Platform: $0.10

8th Ave. L Platform: $0.10

What a day this has been!  This smashes my previous record for the most found at a single time, not to mention for any given day!  I have spent a long time pondering both the massive find, and the people who stood around it not picking it up and I have come to the conclusion that there were two stages to this change ending up on the ground for me to find.  The first stage was The Dropping, in which there are two scenarios.  Keep in mind that the subways are still extremely dirty, wet and slushy.  Either the person who dropped the money was rushing onto a train when he or she dropped it and didn't want to risk missing the train to get it.  This scenario is understandable I suppose.  It would be worth it to me to forgo the dropped change if it meant not being late to an important meeting, or some such similar necessary appointment.  The second, and equally plausible, scenario, although one in which I do not agree with the dropper, is that the change, upon contact with the floor, had become too dirty to pick up.  This case, in my opinion, is less likely because of the quantity of money dropped.  I believe that most people would pick up at least the larger denominations, leaving the lowly penny behind, especially in the case of the quarters.  Quarters are almost essential to our everyday lives.  They feed our laundry machines, and the parking meter, and represent a tangible and meaningful sum of money, especially when compared to the penny which requires ninety nine of its kind to make up a single dollar.  No it is not often that a quarter is purposefully left behind, nor are the other "silver denominations."

The second stage of the change's journey to my pocket was that of The Bystander's Dilemma.  There was quite the group of people all standing near to the change on the floor and the change was all lying on the yellow safety line on the platform, so it was not as if it was hidden to the casual onlooker.  In fact, it was because of this extra contrast in color that I was able to spot the change out of the corner of my eye as I walked quickly passed, forcing me to make a quick one eighty in order to get to the money.  Thus, three scenarios present themselves: the first is that they all didn't see the change lying in front of them for the taking; the second is that the change was too dirty lying in the slush of the subway; and the third is that, once on the ground, the change had become untouchable because of perceived public perception.  The first two scenarios make sense without any further explanation, as inexcusable as the second still is, but let us dive a little bit deeper into this third scenario.

I am certain that almost every one of us sees some amount of discarded change on the ground.  Why would anybody just walk passed the money on the ground?  Of course, this is the question that sparked the creation of this blog.  Through the course of the first days of finding change on the ground, I've been put into some fairly awkward situations in order to retrieve the fallen money.  Sometimes I have had to step in and around people who are in line to make purchases.  Other times, I have had to stop in the middle of rush hour on the steps down to the train platform so I could pick up a penny.  The amount of judgement I felt from the people all around me was nearly suffocating at times, until I became accustomed to not caring about what the people around me might be thinking.  It later dawned on me that this might be a big reason most people wouldn't pick up change on the street.  We are all so occupied with what the people around us think that we become paralyzed.  Others may have seen the money on the floor right in front of them, but would never dare to pick it up.  Perhaps they think it makes them look like penny-pinchers, or maybe they're worried about being seen getting their hands dirty.  Whatever the case may be, what effectively stops a bystander from retrieving free money is that they themselves imagine the others standing around will judge them for it.  We stop ourselves from doing what we all want to do because someone else, who we may never meet, might think less of us.  Doesn't that seem a little bit crazy?