As a fundraiser for the United Way, the office is holding a “Penny War”. Everyone is split up into six groups and each group has a plastic container in the break room. You get one point for every penny you put into your own container and give negative points for putting any other kind of coin (or dollar) into another group’s container (five points for a nickel, ten for a dime, etc.). At the end of the week, the group that has the highest number of points (which will likely be the least negative points) wins… something. I’m really not sure and didn’t find out exactly what was going on until this afternoon.
When I got to work today, I had no idea why there was a group of people in front of the table who were busting up rolls of coins. I thought they might have been involved with the United Way pancake breakfast somehow, but nope! Those guys wanted to jam their container completely full of pennies so no one could put any other kinds of coins in it. They were even putting in pennies, then shaking it around so they could make some space to fit more inside (and keep everything else out).
At one point, I guess one person tried to take some pennies out so they could stuff in a roll of nickels; later on, someone was emptying the pennies into a box because the container was so full. Both times, people in that group went nuts. They were fuming about how people were trying to screw them over, they bought all those pennis to fill up the container, blah blah blah.
Honestly, it seemed a little sad. It was a game that was supposed to benefit the United Way, but by jamming all of those pennies inside, it was impossible for anyone else to donate money into that container. (All of their complaining wasn’t very appealing, either.) Thus, I decided to make the world a better place by seeing how effective their container-shaking method worked: “Hmmm… well, I can slip this quarter just under the opening… and this quarter fits, too… I can squeeze another quarter in on the other side… there’s room for a couple dimes over here…” I ended up putting $1.15 inside and could have added more if I’d had a few more coins in my pocket.
At the beginning of each day, there’s a sheet at the table that shows how much money each container had at the end of the previous day (pennies minus everything else). If I manage to put that group into the double digit range—less than a dollar for all of their work and all of their complaining—I can only imagine the looks on their faces. I’m sure our group is already five bucks in the hole, but I figure that if you’re gonna lose the penny war, you can still take comfort in knowing you won a couple moral victories, especially if those victories come from digging around in the seats of your car for spare change.
I bet a C-note could fit inside a jar full of pennies and no one would be the wiser.
Apparently, a C-note would have been necessary—the morning tally said they managed to squeeze over 5800 pennies inside. (I’m hoping they got a head start on Monday; if they didn’t, I’m gonna need to get my eyes checked. And the container checked for a hole in the bottom that stretches down through the table and onto the floor.)