The Paddy Files

There is nothing like a crisp edition of The New York Times with its assortment of supplements to start the day well. Even sweeter is the fact that it is free. As I sit outside Pi Café in the Science Centre with my paper in hand and intellectual face working double time, there is an unspoken conspiracy being played out beyond the typed font in my paper, and most of us are players. It is a conspiracy of rejection, abandonment and prejudice.

I peep my eyes over the top of the broad sheets and watch as man, woman, students and staff alike, all make their way over to the stack of New York Times in the lobby. They stoop to take a newspaper and pull out the second edition from the top, often leaving the premiere vicariously dangling over the edge or sending the arts supplement askew. It is the unspoken avoidance of the paper at the top of the pile that I am referring to. It is the rejected newspaper. Nobody wants it. It is tossed and bashed around as apparently better newspapers from underneath are slid out. Why is it that we want everything perfect and undamaged, even though as soon as you open the paper, it’s pristine fresh-from-the-press look is lost forever anyway? And you are going to open it. This is an international human behavioural phenomenon that I have witnessed and attempted to study firsthand.

There was a local shop three miles from my house in Ireland that I cycled to every Sunday morning. I would lock my bicycle against the gate around the back, unlock the door, turn off the alarm and bring up the shutters. The first hour or so consisted of dragging in the various editions of Sunday papers that had been dumped outside overnight and painstakingly putting all the right supplements and free magazines into the correct paper. Then I carefully laid out each different paper into neat piles. My hands were black from handling them and over the weeks it became something special every Sunday morning. The customers knew me by name and knew exactly where to look to get their paper. Now I know for a fact, having arranged them myself that all papers were in good condition and displayed well. Yet the top newspaper, an identical replica of the next, was never chosen.

I could understand this with milk; customers would always rearrange your neat stacking in an attempt to get a carton that had a later sell-by date in the back. If only they knew that I was actually putting the oldest milk in the back in anticipation for this. As the customers rolled in and the newspapers rolled out, the top paper always remained. I presumed it was because maybe the top one was more damaged than the others, or at least that is what they thought. So I tried a little experiment. Every time a customer bought a newspaper, I would place the top one under the second one and lo and behold, it was selected from the pile every time. So it wasn’t the actual paper that made a difference, it was the idea that they had the best newspaper.

This behavior is commonplace in our society. Nothing but the best is good enough. Second-hand clothing and books are scoffed at because someone else has handled them. DVD and CD values plummet as soon as the outer plastic is removed. Newspapers with the smallest of creases are pushed aside and even discarded because nobody will want them. We want things new all the time. Holiday destinations have to be different and increasingly exotic every year. Perfectly-running vehicles are replaced with newer models after only two or three years, just because. The problem is waste and the cause is a worldwide desensitizing to the value of money. The solution to every problem; “Buy a new one”. Unfortunately, not all things can be replaced so easily.

So as I watch the stack of papers shrink from behind my edition, like a game of JENGA, the top piece always remains. How quickly it can all collapse!