Middle School Magazine Drive

There was the Magazine Drive at my middle school—an annual fundraiser where students sold subscriptions to a medium that was on death row.* Hindsight is always 20/20, so I now realize the exploitative nature of that fundraiser.** Effectively, the magazine publishers had recruited us as their sales departments and set up a bizarre commission structure.

I remember leafing through my mom’s Rolodex and cold-calling every single relative in it. I asked family that I hadn’t seen in months if they wanted to subscribe to Reader’s Digest or Smithsonian. Many relatives were extremely gracious and obliged me, saying that they had intended to renew a subscription anyway. Enough were gracious such that I was able to achieve the second-best prize.

The second-best prize—which students earned if they sold ten or more subscriptions—was a ride in a Hummer limousine.*** That prize was what motivated me to sell something that I cared nothing about. Seriously, what 12-year-old doesn’t want to ride in a limo? But wait, it gets better. The limo took us on a ride in the middle of the school day to…Burger King. Glamorous. It’s difficult to imagine what the DVC students working behind the counter must have thought when they saw a Hummer limo pull up around noon and twenty middle schoolers pile out. And then watched it happen at least five more times that day. Oh yeah, the second-best prize wasn’t all that exclusive. There were at least two limo trips for top sellers in my grade alone.

The top prize—which was awarded only to the absolute top seller in each grade—was thirty seconds or so in the “Money Booth”. This device resembled a phone booth made of a supporting frame covered by clear vinyl. Shortly after the student entered, it was turned on, and an upward stream of air began blowing dollar bills around the booth. The student attempted to grab as many bills as possible before the time limit expired. It was a bit challenging, as the floating bills were constantly darting around due to the air current. Realistically, it wasn’t possible to grab more than ten or fifteen dollars in the window of time that the machine was on.

So let’s think about this. A student sells ten subscriptions, and he or she gets a limo ride. Now renting a limousine ain’t cheap, but when each trip carts approximately twenty students at a time, the per-student cost is pretty low. Let’s hypothetically say the limo rental is $500/hour, and each student gets the one ride in that hour. Then the per-student cost is about $25. I have no idea what the magazine subscriptions I sold cost, but I can tell you that ten of them would far exceed $25. And the top seller, who probably had to sell far more than ten to smoke out the competition (because, again, what 12-year-old doesn’t want the chance to freely grab hovering bills?), typically only cost the program about $12.

This is what I mean by a bizarre commission structure. Not only were the forms of commission payouts really weird, but the students who did the magazine publishers’ dirty work were compensated woefully inadequately. But I guess the promise of items that are typically unattainable as a reward, even if the payout is low, is how you motivate kids to get into sales. Hell, maybe even adults too. If a telemarketing company had as a benefit “takes employees to Burger King for lunch in a limo”, I might actually rethink my career path.****

* It was the early-to-mid-2000’s; online print was well on its way to surpass physical print.

** And most other school fundraisers, really. Except the cookie dough fundraisers. Those things are the real deal. Like, they alone might be enough to convince me to move to suburbia one day.

*** This was when Hummers were in their heyday. If there’s one positive thing to have come out of the Great Recession of 2008, it was the decline of Hummers.

**** But actually, no.