Friday, June 13, 2008

The battle of the newspapers

Every morning free newspapers are handed out. There is friendly competition in action as one newspaper is the Metro and the other is the Herald am (the pm version is not free). Now, these are in addition to the regular non-free papers that are the Irish Times and the Irish Independent.

There are people who's job it is to stand all over the city and force the paper for you. TAKE IT! Well, that's what it feels like sometimes. Most of the time I just say "I'm good" or "No thanks" where most people just ignore them completely. They often stand next to each other - then there's the having to decide and feeling guilty for not taking the other person's option. Stupid Catholic guilt.

Now, there is a guy handing out a Metro at the entrance to my train station. I feel sorry for this guy and he seems nice so I always take one. It is good to get a dose of news on my train ride anyway. But then when I'm walking from the train station to the office there is a guy handing out the Herald and he makes me laugh so I take one of those. At one point, there was a guy running down the street - obviously in a hurry - and the Herald guy with the constant smile on his face started running after him with a paper. Too funny. Of course the stories are pretty much the same, with a few differences. The pictures are always the same.

Today the Metro people were also handing out free bread. It was 2 small loaves individually wrapped and then wrapped together. But here's the weird part - there really wasn't anyone taking it! Now, I didn't take it because I didn't want to carry that thing to work with me, so maybe that was the rational of others, but I thought it very strange that people weren't taking the free stuff. If it were on my way home I would be all over the free bread. Bring it.

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