Taking one section from a free newspaper and leaving the rest: is that (in?)considerate?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Idle question for the Doper community - everyone get out your santimonious hats and judgemental socks and let’s go to town!

This question is based on my real-life office, which has a small unmanned (no receptionist) lobby. You walk in, sidel up to the elevator/stairs, and off you go. The office management provides, as a courtesy, a stack of about ten or so newspapers (I believe it’s the Wall St. Journal or the NYT - one of the biggies) with a little sign saying “Complimentary of [CompanyName].”

Let’s say you work there and saw that one section of the paper had a bunch of interesting articles that day, but no other secion is even remotely interesting. Is it better to take an entire newspaper (let’s say you’ll recycle what you take anyway) knowing you only want part of it? Or is it better to leave the rest for someone else, with the knowlege that someone might pick up a paper hoping to read each section only to be disappointed that the one you took is gone?
Hang on a sec, poll comin’ …

2

I don’t see anything egregiously wrong with just taking out the section you want, especially if there’s a stack of them sitting there.

3

I voted based on the assumption that “complimentary” means “free to take” and not “free to take to the chair over there and then return when you’re done”.

4

I voted with the following requirement. If you take just one section, you should separate the remaining sections, rather than leave them nested as though they were a complete paper. In this way, the guy who wants a whole paper has just as much chance of getting one, and the guy who needn’t have the whole paper has a chance to get the section he wants.

5

When my boss is out of town we have to send him parts of the local papers. He wants the food section that comes on Wednesdays (among other things). For the past few months the food section has been missing from our paper, which means I have to buy a whole new issue just to get that section. Wasteful and annoying. (I understand in your scenario the papers are complimentary, but what if by the time you realize a section you want is missing all the complimentary issues are gone?)

Better than just swiping the section you want, swipe the whole thing and leave the parts you don’t want on the train or something, where no one has the expectation of getting a whole paper for free.