KEY CLOZE TEXT: HONEST WORKERS OR THIEVES?

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Once upon a time, Paul Feldman dreamed big dreams. Trained as an agricultural economist, he wanted to tackle world hunger. Instead, he took a job in Washington, analysing weapons expenditures for the US Navy. He held senior-level jobs and earned good money, but he wasn’t fully engaged in his work. At the office Christmas party, colleagues would introduce him to their wives not as ‘the head of the public research group’ (which he was) but as ‘the guy who brings in the bagels’.

The bagels had begun as a casual gesture: a boss treating his employees whenever they won a research contract. Then he made it a habit. Every Friday, he would bring in some bagels, a serrated knife, and cream cheese. When employees from neighbouring floors heard about the bagels, they wanted some too. Eventually he was bringing in 15 dozen bagels a week. In order to recoup his costs, he set out a cash basket and a sign with the suggested price. His collection rate was about 95 per cent; he attributed the underpayment to oversight, not fraud.

In 1984, when his research institute fell under new management, Feldman decided to quit his job and sell bagels. His economist friends thought he had lost his mind, but his wife supported him.

Driving around the office parks that encircle Washington, he solicited customers with a simple pitch: early in the morning, he would deliver some bagels and a cash basket to a company’s snack room; he would return before lunch to pick up the money and the leftovers. Within a few years, Feldman was delivering 8,400 bagels a week to 140 companies and earning as much as he had made as a research analyst.

He had also, quite without meaning to, designed a beautiful economic experiment. By measuring the money collected against the bagels taken, he found it possible to tell, down to the penny, just how honest his customers were. Did they steal from him? If so, what were the characteristics of a company that stole versus a company that did not? In what circumstances did people tend to steal more, or less?