Spongebob street team, or how I lost faith in part of humanity

Yesterday I sold my soul to Nickelodeon.

I received an e-mail from a random member of the Nickelodeon promotion team. They were looking for interns to volunteer for a guerrilla marketing campaign in Times Square honoring the 10th anniversary of Spongebob Squarepants. I have always like Spongebob and thought it was a great way to get face time with different parts of the company so I volunteered, ready to wake up early and give away merchandise on the streets.

There was an orientation two days prior in a beautiful board room on the 44th floor of MTV's Times Square building. We met with the organizers for 20 minutes and found out what exactly we'd be doing. Dressed in bright yellow shirts and hats, we were to walk around Times Square and Rockefeller center giving out shirts, DVDs, CDs, and other Spongebob themed merchandise. I was incredibly excited about this and stayed late talking to the organizers, finding out more about their jobs (promotion marketing) and the campaign.

Apparently I made a good impression because they made me the leader of one of the groups when I showed up on the day of the campaign. I had woken up at 4:30, made my way up to Times Square on the 5:10 R train (something I hope not to do again anytime soon), got to the board room (A.K.A. the war room), and watched the sun rise over the East River as we got our assignments. My group, made up of eight interns and two full time staffers, was assigned to Good Morning America, Times Square patrols, and the line for Shrek: The Musical. With over a dozen bags of merch and several signs featuring the delightful sponge, we took to the streets.

My camp counselor instincts kicked in immediately. I was once again in charge of 10 people. I was dealing with greedy people grabbing at anything they think they might want. I felt myself being forced to be polite to some people that didn't deserve my courtesy.

I don't know what it is about free merchandise, but it brings out the worst in human nature. Specifically with hardcore New Yorkers and non-English speaking workers, "please" and "thank you" didn't seem to exist. There, of course, were very polite people and very ecstatic people. Unfortunately, these people were the exception and not the rule. I can't count how many times I heard the word "gimme" used by people over the age of 30. I was insulted on several occassions about being a cheap bastard and not giving them more than one thing. Do people not feel grateful for the t-shirt they didn't have to spend 15 dollars on? People would even try to grab from the bag around my shoulder while I was giving a shirt to an eight year old kid. What are we teaching to the kids that see this behavior? That as the public in a corporate world we have some unspoken entitlement to whatever we can grab to beat the capitalist system that keeps our nation running?

Throughout the course of the day, I kept in touch with the organizors (read: Generals) getting the directions at where to attack, who to give to, when to refill ammunition. By the end of the day, my team was exhausted. We had been hassled by everyone between 41st and 59th streets, yelled at by sanitation workers for not "hooking them up for their hard work," and glared at by parents who could only get 1 shirt despite having 4 kids.

All in all, when I left, I felt good though. I had been thrown into a leadership roll. I led a group of peers, unpaid interns working purely out of love for the entertainment industry. We fought through tough crowds and unruly mobs to spread news for the company most of us are paying to work for. We woke up before the sun and didn't leave our feet until the mid afternoon to further the presence of one of the most recognizable characters in the world.

Eh. Maybe Spongebob will end up saving the world and then I can put that on my resume.