Four free RBE ideas to help business students this semester

Cartoon by Gabbie Evans. 

ANDRES SALERNO | OPINION COLUMNIST | asalern1@butler.edu

It’s coming.

The tension in the air is palpable. Somewhere deep within Holcomb, an army of dawg-print charlatans are being prodded and prepared to be unleashed upon the student body. Real Business Experience (RBE) season is upon us. God help us all.

Since many of us are about to suffer through our closest friends wielding guilt like a cudgel and beating us into buying literal garbage bought in bulk from a sketchy Chinese website, I thought it would be a good idea to bring forth four products that I believe would do well with this student body.

  1.     Laptop Sticker Remover

We all go through that phase. When you are sitting in the middle of Starbucks and avoiding your homework by looking at the tables around you, you realize how much you can tell about people by what they put on the back of their laptop — major, hobbies, whether they are the kind of people who say doggo — all is apparent. Still avoiding your homework, you log onto Redbubble and run up a bill.

Maybe you grew as a person, maybe your interests have changed, maybe your liberal arts education paid off and you grew enough respect for the arts and humanities that your STEMinist laptop sticker doesn’t have the girl power punch you once thought it did. Things change, and that’s OK.

Luckily for you, at the desk inside Starbucks, there’s a solution for you! Buy some overpriced sticker remover from your friends! There’s even a paw print on the side of the bottle for that RBE authenticity.

  1.     Friday morning IV Bags outside Starbucks

Have you ever wished there was an intravenous solution to Thursday night’s problems? Even though the Friday morning scaries have rapidly declined since the death of “Jersdays,” every once in a blue moon, students will still find themselves out and about eating disgusting Hotbox pizza four hours before their first class. Our student body — being the champs they are — does not often shy away from the challenge of making that first class. We all know hell hath no fury like a Butler professor scorned by a handful of absences over the course of four months.

To help in this righteous quest, some entrepreneurial wonder kid should grease some palms in the pharmacy department, slap a dawg-print on a saline bag and roll out some IVs to the table outside Starbucks. Feel your hangover fade away and your eyes hit the back of your head as you are washed away into blissful rehydration. Take that to Shark Tank.

  1.     Flashlight

Since the university refuses to provide resources to illuminate our campus at night, students feel the dread of death every time the sun goes down. A vigilant entrepreneur should take advantage of the demand for light!

Imagine the panic of having to walk from Irwin back to Butler Terrace at 2 a.m. You’re scared, but then you remember: Chad from your FYS group — whom you’ve hardly talked to since — guilted you into buying his “Dawg-Lite” outside Starbucks. He wasn’t forceful, but the fear of disappointing others filled you with anxiety. You reach for your $15 flashlight and light the way home, providing a sense of security and comfort that Danko can only dream about denying us.

I mean, I would buy a resold flashlight from a morally ambiguous Chinese manufacturer with a dawg-print lazily slapped on the side of it, and my friend wouldn’t even have to leverage our relationship to sell it.

  1.     Tattoo Station

I’m tired of the teasing, this dumb flirtatious dance that keeps happening — dawg-print phone cases, dawg-print PopSockets, dawg-print charms —  I give up. I’m giving in. I can’t do this anymore.

Someone set up a tattoo station at the Starbucks desk and just do it. Tattoo the damn dawg-print on my face. Stop this game and just get on with it. We are all so tired.

Please.

Authors

Top