My findings in the past few weeks have led me to determine there are three types of people in the world. The first type are nice to people in a penguin suit. The second type heckle people in a penguin suit. The third type aren’t paying too much attention because obviously penguin suits either aren’t interesting and most of them would rather be driving poorly.
As part of my temporary seasonal employment I have to stand out in a penguin costume on a major intersection. I wave a sign advertising our store in the hopes that people will visit the store and buy things. Its certainly not my favorite job in the world and nothing I would ever aspire to do permanently . Honestly in the costume I feel like a minor league baseball mascot or like I should be on one of those video clips that gets passed around the internet (At least five people that I saw took my picture on their camera phone so I know *something* of me will be getting passed around).
The first type of people (the nice ones) ranged in all different ages and sizes. They waved or they honked their cars at me smiling. One guy was so nice he even gave me a soft drink and an ice cream bar and told me whatever they were paying me to be out there wasn’t enough. (sadly enough he was right). The kids in this category generally called me “Penguin” or “Mister Penguin” despite probably being the only penguin in the world that wore converse sneakers (unless of course someone left a pair at an aquarium or in the arctic and the penguins were to figure out a way to get a hold of them) and being close to two and a half feet taller than the largest living species of penguin. I even had some teenagers ask if they could take a picture of themselves with me. I gladly obliged.
The second type of people (the hecklers) were mostly the type of people you would expect to be heckling. Generally it was really stupid things like yelling at me in a bird like voice or saying the equivalent of “Yo Mama”. These were the pillars of society. These are the people you normally see in the background of shows like Cops (they’d also probably brag to their friends about being in the background of an episode of Cops). The sad thing about this category is much like the first type of people they ranged in all ages and sizes as well.
The third type of people were indifferent to me. I was fine with this. It beat the heckling immensely.
Unfortunately a sizeable group of these people couldn’t follow traffic laws. I wasn’t expecting the driving to be as bad as it was. In an hour on average I usually counted at least six people running red lights. That’s not mentioning the lack of turn signaling use. I kept thinking to myself that I was going to be a witness to an accident and have to tell someone what I saw while wearing a penguin suit and that I’d have to use my flippers to point.
In conclusion, I didn’t really expect to be standing out in a penguin costume and be as focused on the same people who were focused on the abnormality of seeing a guy standing in a penguin costume holding a sign. But the next time you see a person in a penguin suit remember two things. Firstly, they are probably grossly underpaid and secondly they are keeping their eye on you too (If only to make sure they aren’t going too have eggs thrown at them).
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