Metro is wasting its money

I can't understand why Metro insists on hiring people to hand out copies of their newspaper. To me, it's a waste of money. It's a free newspaper, and so they're already losing money relative to what they would make if they charged for it. They have already spent money on the manufacture and distribution of their green newspaper boxes--and these things are a one-time cost. Why then should they incur the continuing cost of hiring human distributors? Aren't the newspaper boxes good enough by themselves? Does Metro think we're blind, that we can't see these boxes for ourselves?