Mardi Gras is one of many events that students have the opportunity to volunteer at. People volunteer for all sorts of reasons—for the free T-shirt, complimentary dinner or the excuse to yell at people.
Whatever your reason for volunteering, you will gain experience from it.
Here are four things we learned from volunteering at Mardi Gras:
1. People will get unnecessarily angry if you tell them no.
I learned that when closing a line and telling people you can’t be in it any longer they will get upset. Never mind that it was seven minutes till the event ended and the line had been open for four hours. If you get between a bro and his right to get a henna dragon on his forearm you’re practically stomping on the constitution.
Pictured: man telling someone “no.” Not pictured: angry people.
This same thing applied blocking elevator use, or using certain exits any slight inconvenience is an affront to their having a good time.
2. Either people don’t get drunk or they get way too drunk.
Have you ever seen on sitcoms when a character has too much to drink and suddenly every single inhibition is gone? Well, normally in real life that doesn’t happen and people fall somewhere on the scale. Even though Mardi Gras is a dry event people do plenty of prep work before and sometimes (if they can sneak it) during.
They’re drunk, happy and dancing, which means they were probably filming a beer commercial.
I saw most people who were having fun maybe a little buzzed, and then there where those who passed sober 10 miles ago. They weren’t that bad and tended to be pretty chatty if they talked to you.
3. Wearing a purple shirt gives you an air of authority.
And yellow gives you even more authority.
The shirts worn by volunteers were purple, while the team leads’ were yellow.
I can’t tell where the snake ends and the shirt starts…
There was some minor debate about the superiority of the color purple—it was, of course, the color worn by royals in the good ol’ days. (Days when using the guillotine was acceptable.)
It was perhaps the illustrious history of the color purple that gave us the authority to yell at people and tell them to form lines. Or maybe it was the bold print VOLUNTEER stamped across our front…
4. You will be randomly put where you are needed.
That might be with the live animals.
“You can’t pay me enough to touch that snake.”
Well, joke’s on you because we aren’t paying you.
Pictured: A poor purple-shirt being forced to hold a snake.
You might be sitting down in a plush chair handing out tickets. Or you could be standing, yelling instructions at dozens of people. You could even be at the front door, telling teenagers that no, their high school student ID will not get them in.
But there are occasional emergencies at events like Mardi Gras. So keep in mind that wherever you’re assigned, you could still end up cleaning someone’s regurgitated beer off the bathroom floor.
Aggie Radio staff contributed to this article.
