Next Level Flyering: This Guy is Just Handing Out Business Cards on Locust

Penn’s pre-professional culture has driven students to some fairly extreme lengths when trying to get a leg up in the hunt for jobs, but this OCR season, one Penn senior is ready to go above and beyond the call of duty in his search for a full time position.

After seeing certain popular locust flyerers successfully build up their own personal brand, Frederick Watkins (C ‘18) felt inspired to take things a step further. Rather than actually invest his own free time in advertising another organization, Watkins could just skip the middleman and advertise himself on Locust. Fred’s plan was simple: design a flyer that, at a glance, looked like legitimate promotion for a group at Penn, but in reality was just a business card extolling his own virtues. Then, he would hand it out at Penn's busiest walkway intersections.

Sadly, things are bleak for our budding entrepreneur. It seems like a hopeless grind for Fred as hundreds of Penn students walk by him without so much as a glance in his general direction. Luckily, Fred has become so desensitized to rejection after being shunned by dozens of employers that he doesn’t have much pride left to lose.

“I’ve had so many people regretfully inform me of their decision to not offer me a job that I don’t really remember what it’s like to get accepted into anything," Watkins told us while aggressively trying to hand a passing student a copy of his resume. "Maybe my Penn acceptance letter was actually a rejection and I just didn’t get the hint.” 

But things aren’t all lost. “So far I’ve connected with seven people over LinkedIn and only four of them look like bots. Also, someone passed my flyer on to the McDonald’s on 40th which was really thoughtful and nice,” Watkins said, as he stared into the middle distance, glassy-eyed. Here’s hoping that he finds a job soon!