Sports

Super Bowl volunteers are soft targets for the haters

Bob CollinsBob Collins Nov 13, 2017
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Yesterday afternoon, thousands of volunteers for the upcoming Super Bowl week attended their training on how to put the state’s best foot forward for visitors to our fair state, many convinced that we’re just nicer and more polite than people in the rest of the country.

Even South Dakotans are showing up to make Minnesotans look good.

“It’s one of those things you grow up watching it and it’s not in our part of the country very often to begin with and the opportunity to sort of be involved, kind of a unique adventure you’d never get to do otherwise,” Sioux Falls resident Terry Vandrovec tells KDLT.

“It’s an opportunity to shine a light on our state. People may not know it, but we have a different attitude here than in other states,” volunteer Ed Schoeller of New Hope, who travels for work, tells the Pioneer Press. “We are nicer and more polite. I want to make sure the visitors have a good impression and want to come back.”

If there’s one religion with which we’re indoctinated at an early age in Minnesota, it’s how much nicer we are than people elsewhere.

Tell it to the (PiPress) comments section:

… can you say the word SUCKERS!!!! Yeah, come down and volunteer to stand out in freezing cold while billionaires sit inside and suck up all our “more friendly than other places” stupidity. Gotta love Minnesota gullibility.

“Don’t they have anything else to do?” another commenter asks in the reaction to a similar Star Tribune story.

Sure, they could sit at home and tap messages on the Internet.

The pushback against people who are volunteering their time to be welcoming to visitors is, we imagine, aimed at the Vikings, who fleeced taxpayers for a new stadium, but it’s as much a yardstick of how “special” we are as anyone who’s ever traveled for work.

Maybe we’re not that special.