La Salle Oddity

By Frank Visco
Collegian Editor
September 13, 2006

Having Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi as your boss? It may sound like something Improv 101 would come up with in a segment of “World’s Worst,” but to freshman political science major Joe Gauger, it’s somewhat of a reality.

Although he’s never actually met Al Yeganeh, the real-life inspiration for the Soup Nazi, Gauger has spent the last 9 months under the employment of one of his franchised soup kitchens, which are named “The Original Soup Man.”

“It’s actually a pretty cool place to work, and I’m looking to go back there over Thanksgiving and in December,” Gauger said. “The couple I worked for was really nice, actually, so it was a good experience. Plus, it’s a great story to tell.”

According to Gauger, whose soup kitchen in located in the Capital City Mall in Camp Hill, Pa., Yeganeh is not keen on being called the Soup Nazi, and employees are encouraged not to make a habit of it.

“I was told that the corporate people are really adamant about not referring to him as the Soup Nazi, even though we have a TV set up with a looped DVD of clips with various interviews of Yeganeh on TV, and he always gets really angry whenever they call him the Soup Naz,” Gauger said.

While that may be true, to many people the store is widely associated with the Soup Nazi, and so Gauger is often asked if he or his coworkers ever used the famous line, “No soup for you.”

“My bosses tell us to use it only if someone’s really pissing you off,” Gauger said. “I never got to do it myself, but the women I work for got so angry once that she did. It’s a funny thing.”

As if his ties to Seinfeldian culture weren’t enough to make Gauger the ideal La Salle oddity, he’s also got two strange skills of his own. Firstly, Gauger is capable of doing the popular Russian dance in which the dancer gets very low and alternatively kicks out his legs to the music.

“I’m not sure what it’s called, but people know it as soon as they see it,” he said. “I think it’s cool, and it’s fun to do at parties.”

Lastly, Gauger has one other oddity, at least according to his friend, freshman Katie McNeil.

“He wakes up every morning at 7 a.m. even though he’s got mostly late classes,” she said. “Considering he’s a college student, that makes him a pretty unique guy.”

viscof1@lasalle.edu