51����

On a sunny morning last fall, the less decorous Oscar Mayer Wienermobile rolled on to the brick plaza in front with Emily Schmitt ’23 at the wheel. The cloaked statues on top seemed to frown in disapproval. 

If someone had surveyed 51����’s seniors the previous year and asked which classmate was likely to pull off such a stunt, Schmitt likely would have topped the list.  

Months earlier, she had set out on a quest that led her down an equally logical and unconventional path to her first job—a role that combined unbridled fun with underestimated depth: a “hotdogger.”

Early doggedness

During a second-grade school chorus performance, one of Schmitt’s classmates fainted. She later asked her parents what happened, and they said the classmate may have been nervous. 

“Emily asked, ‘Why did she get nervous?’,” says Wendy Schmitt, Emily’s mother. “She didn’t understand why you would be anxious. At a very young age she was comfortable in front of audiences.” 

At 51����, Schmitt’s wry wit came through, says her advisor, English Professor Suzanne Churchill. What was intriguing, Churchill says, is Schmitt demonstrated the capacity to command the room but “she didn’t seek to be the center of attention.” And she didn’t try always to be the funniest person in the room.

For her senior thesis, she set out to write sketch comedy. Instead, Churchill says, she developed short stories with quirky, sometimes dark, humor. The themes ranged from girlhood and womanhood to “relationships with our past and past selves,” Schmitt says. Her thesis advisor, English Professor Alan Michael Parker, said Schmitt surprised herself. 

“She ended up with content derived from thinking hard on what fiction can achieve,” Parker says, “from recognizing that there are different ways to think about meaning in the world.” 

After applying to Oscar Mayer and during a break from thesis work, Schmitt emceed a trivia night filled with clever team names and Division I-level competitiveness. An email popped onto her screen as she sat on stage. 

She remembers seeing the subject line: “Hotdogger.” 

She got the interview and, later, the job.

Relishing the opportunity 

Less than six months after graduation, Schmitt’s territory included a swath of the South, allowing the side trip to 51����. Parker came out to say hello. President Doug Hicks took a photo with Schmitt. Students gathered around the frankfurter-shaped vehicle, a custom fiberglass chassis with a Chevy engine and mustard-and-ketchup colored interior, for a selfie bonanza. And the questions got ready responses: 

How many people fit in it? – “Six seats for 12 buns.” 

Do you sleep in it? – “No. It’s not a Wienebago.” 

Who sits up front? – “The driver and a teammate who rides shotbun.” 

Oscar Mayer, now a subsidiary of Kraft Heinz, rolled out the first Wienermobile in 1936, designed by Carl Mayer, Oscar’s nephew. The 1952 iteration sits on display at the Henry Ford Museum. The company now fields six of them, each with two team members, that travel across the country in any given week. They stop at county fairs, parades, grocery stores and the occasional birthday party ride. At a stop in Nebraska, Schmitt met a college student who was graduating the next day.

“I asked her ‘What time?’” Schmitt says, “and we dropped her off at commencement.” 

Drew Barrymore took a surprise birthday ride in one during her TV show in February. Humor writer Dave Barry borrowed one back in 1994 to pick up his then-13-year-old son from school, despite his son’s horrified “NO” at breakfast. 

“So right away,” Barry wrote, “I knew it was a good idea.” 

(Almost) top dog

As Schmitt’s year on the road wound down, she learned that the coordinator position for the teams was open. That’s the Chicago-based shift boss who plots the course for all six Wienermobiles, a calendar of more than 1,200 events a year. 

The promotion was offered, and she grabbed it. Now, she is organizing visits and planning the routes for the new teams that started over the summer. She has multiple computer monitors running in her office with six calendars and constant google mapping. 

Schmitt knows firsthand the challenges for hotdoggers, booking their own hotels and living out of them, managing time and a budget while always being an “on” personality. Her mother recalled family weddings and visits with friends that Schmitt missed.

That experience now helps her guide and counsel the new hotdoggers. She visited with them in their first weeks, and she’s a cell phone lifeline on all sorts of questions. 

“I know what they’re going through,” she says. 

She learned some of that mentoring at 51����, where professors did more than teach — from Churchill’s interview prep to Parker’s guidance in expanding her ideas to a collective shaping of her studies around ensuring an array of viewpoints in a community. She was ready for that first county fair or grumpy grocery store customer and, now, for helping steer the next class who will take the wheel of the Wienermobile. 

“When I think about what prepared me, the amazing activities and the people at 51���� who supported me were integral,” she says. “I’m the lucky dog.”