The bag of papers

Okay, so I’m walking into Starbucks, right after they opened at 6am, to get my morning HCOJ and read the WSJ. Just to the right of the entrance door, sitting on the ground, I saw a murky, translucent trash bag that looked like it contained papers. Well, I opened the door and saw the racks which hold the news were empty and made an assumption that the bag must be a fresh delivery of newspapers. So, out of a desire to perhaps ‘help things along’, I grabbed the bag and held it up to the light. Sure enough, there were newspapers in there.

“Ah”, I said to myself, as I brought the bag inside.

As I re-entered, smiling, I held it up in gesture, with a proud nod toward the young manager lady who smiled back graciously and said, “Oh, thank you but that’s the old news. Today’s papers haven’t come in yet and we’re not sure why.”

So my smile slipped away, a wasted but well intentioned effort was nothing more than a fool’s errand. And, I put the bag of useless papers back where I found them.

A few minutes later, while surfing on my iPhone for current headlines, I noticed some other sucker had come walking in with the old papers, who went through not quite the same process - she was able to carry the bag all the way over to the counter, sitting it down dutifully for the staff, only to be told about the futility of her effort. I watched her meekly pick up the the bag and take it back as I did.

I felt a little relief about that because I certainly don’t want to be known by the staff here as the last one left holding the bag of yesterday’s news....