This past Friday was the 76th birthday of Bikini Bottom restauranteur Mr. Eugene H. Krabs, one of my favorite characters from the late Stephen Hillenburg’s delightful SpongeBob SquarePants. SpongeBob has stuck with me deep into my late 20s, and the first three seasons in particular have been a constant in late-night TV rotations with friends and roommates. Mr. Krabs is a central figure in a lot of my favorite episodes, and a character who has, beyond providing a lot of laughs, helped to push me along in my political development.
The beauty of SpongeBob and the world Hillenburg created under the sea has always gone beyond the absurd antics of SpongeBob and Patrick. One reason the show keeps bringing me back is its light yet extremely real depiction of the realities of working as a young person in America. Despite SpongeBob’s unflappable enthusiasm, the show makes it clear that work at the Krusty Krab is absolute shit work, with little pay, horrible job security, and a penny-pinching boss breathing down your throat at all times.
That boss was our birthday boy, Mr. Krabs. Over the course of the first three seasons alone, Mr. Krabs:
Gives SpongeBob an impossible task to avoid hiring him at Squidward’s request
Threatens SpongeBob with firing if he engaging in hobbies like karate and seahorse raising
Threatens SpongeBob and Patrick with de-butting if they mess up while painting his house (for free).
Fires Squidward for losing his first dime, which was actually in his back pocket
Imprisons SpongeBob and Squidward on a boat until they catch the clam that stole his millionth dollar
Charges SpongeBob and Squidward for the privilege of working at the Krusty Krab and even for “breathing” and “existing”
Forces them to work 24-hour days with no breaks for 40 consecutive days
Attempts to scam SpongeBob out of a million dollar hat
Sells SpongeBob’s soul to a demon for 62 cents
I think I can fairly say that no fictional character has influenced my anti-capitalist leanings more than Eugene Krabs. Krabs, of course, is an exaggeration to the point of absurdity. What makes him so effective, though, is that once you see Krabs in somebody, it is impossible to see them any other way.
Secretly, I’m a little bit naive
This, I think, is actually critical for so many in my generation. The depth of my naiveté knew few bounds as a teenager entering the working world for the first time in the mid-2000s. I believed that people with power wanted to use that power for good, or at the very least, they would use their power to look out for those who work for them. I didn’t understand that there would be people like Mr. Krabs — often outwardly jovial, but at their core, deeply, deeply selfish.
What makes Mr. Krabs’s selfishness stand out all that much more is SpongeBob’s loyalty to both workplace and boss. Throughout the series, SpongeBob doesn’t question Mr. Krabs’s authority nor his benevolence. That makes it all the more painful to watch SpongeBob devote himself to such tasks as delivering a pizza through a desert and a tornado, aiding and abetting in the attempted manslaughter of a health inspector, or rescuing the Krusty Krab from a horde of hungry anchovies. SpongeBob pours his heart into his work and risks his phsyical and mental healthy constantly in the process. And yet, Eugene Krabs would sell him for 62 cents of profit.
In the past eight years of building relationships and following the work of people in the sports, media and gaming industries, I have been exposed to many such creatures. I, like many others, started out in these industries guided by lofty hopes and dreams. Constantly, I have seen young people’s hopes and dreams exploited through false promises of a piece of the pie down the line in exchange for unpaid or poorly compensated work now.
But exposure, lest we forget, has never paid a bill. The major lesson of my 20s has been that any attempt to live your dreams will require navigating industries filled wall-to-wall with Mr. Krabses, all ready to turn your eagerness for your work into money in their wallets.
Being able to hold onto the earnestness and eagerness that SpongeBob brought to his work every day is one of the hardest and most valuable things we can do in our current late capitalist hellscape, but only a superhuman — or a supersponge — can do so under the claw of a Mr. Krabs. I will always be thankful to Hillenburg and SpongeBob for showing us exactly what this particular kind of everyday capitalist meanness looks like. It’s a level of honesty we rarely received from adults about day-to-day life, just one reason why SpongeBob SquarePants will always be a special show to me.