Funny how excited I get about finding a nickel on the ground. What am I going to buy with a nickel? A gumball? I’ll just leave it for some ten-year-old kid to pick up. Someone who will appreciate it.
Nickels are hardly even worth picking up any more. A nickel! What a joke. A cup of coffee is three bucks these days. That’s, geez, sixty nickels. Can you imagine handing the cashier – sorry, barista – at Starbucks sixty nickels? I’m sure he’d take them, but as soon as you pulled away from the drive-through he’d be all, “Hey, Kyle, can you believe Mr. Jingly-Pants, giving me sixty nickels? Next time go to 7-11 and get some Twizzlers too, Jingly-Pants. Maybe catch up on Bazooka Joe while you’re at it. Freaking loser.”
Why am I obsessing about this? I’m sure the kids at Starbucks have better things to talk about. Besides, last time I ordered a venti caramel frappuccino and paid for it with my gold card. I bet they don’t have gold cards. Stupid college kids don’t know anything.
I should just pick up the nickel. I’ve been standing here now for like a minute and a half. People probably think I’m lost or retarded or something. Just pick up the damn nickel already!Forget it. What’s the point? Five cents. Five cents. I’m standing here obsessing over five cents. Didn’t I read somewhere recently that it costs six cents to make a nickel? How dumb is that? And nickels aren’t even made of nickel. They’re made of, like, bronze or something. That doesn’t sound right. Stupid lying piece of shit worthless coin. I should pick you up and melt you down and sell you for scrap.
Yeah, that’s it. I’ll become a bronze merchant, picking up nickels and melting them down in my basement. Where would you even sell scrap metal? I’d need, like, a fence or something. God, I’m an idiot.
Ok, let’s start over. Figure that it takes five seconds to bend over, pick up the nickel, and put it in your pocket. That’s a penny a second. That’s… sixty cents a minute. And, um, three hundred, no, three thousand six hundred cents an hour. That’s, uh, thirty six dollars an hour. Wow, that’s not bad. You could make decent money picking up nickels. That would be a nice little side income.
Not that I’m looking for more hours at this point. I’m already putting in a good fifty hours a week at the office. Another job would really make it hard to maintain my social life. On the other hand, it would be nice to have the money to take a girl out to someplace nicer than the Cracker Barrel.
Alright, so here’s the deal: I’m not going to go looking for nickels, but if I happen to run across one, I’ll pick it up. That will be like my official policy, so next time I won’t have to think about it. So sure, I’ve lost about three minutes thinking about whether I should pick up this nickel, but I think it’s worthwhile to invest some time up front if it results in a solid policy like that. Next time I’ll be like, “Hey, it’s a nickel!” And my official nickel-picking-up policy will kick in. After a while it will be like second nature. I may get so good at it that I can shave off a second or two, substantially increasing my profitability.
Ok, here goes nothing. Ready, set…
Hey, that’s not a nickel. It’s just a disc-shaped piece of metal. Geez, this is demoralizing.
I wonder how much something like that is worth.
If a nickel sounds too good to you to pass up, make sure you check out the Clay Pigeon's Looming Recession Issue. And be sure to drop a dime on Humor-Blogs.com. ]]>