Cupcakes. Â Georgetown Cupcakes, to be precise. Â The story was on the Today Show, chronicling how people were willing to stand in long lines for their favorite foodstuffs. Â In this case, a choice of 20 frosting-laden varieties that may cost you an hour or more of your life. Â And with the economy causing some to reassess their financial futures, perhaps we should not be surprised to find a burgeoning job market in “line standing”.Â
The ad could read – “Are you either too lazy or self-important to support your own body weight? Â If yes, operators are standing by with comfortable shoes and a waterproof parka.” Â
Take this story from last fall’s Washington Post. Â It seems that lobbyists have been hiring hourly workers to secure them the choicest seats in congressional hearing rooms. Â Said the article:
“Washington has a lot of bizarre practices, and it often takes an outsider to recognize them. Line-standing has been around for 15 years, and by now people on the Hill hardly see it anymore — hardly see the people with folding chairs and blankets waiting outside congressional office buildings in the middle of the night, then lining up to shuffle into the building in the mornings, and setting up camp again outside hearing rooms, where they nap and talk (sometimes to themselves) and wait for their clients to arrive. And when the clients come, perky and caffeinated, having slept all night in real beds, they relieve the line-standers and nab seats in the hearing rooms — the closer to the dais of power, the better.”
But it’s not limited to our nation’s capitol.  We saw examples with the release of the iPhone last summer, an entrepreneur cashing on at the Vancouver passport office and even Comcast’s hiring of the homeless for a net neutrality hearing.  Heck, if you live in San Diego and are “reliable”, you can still earn $150 helping out a Comic Con fanatic who needs his beauty sleep.  Â
Not to deprive those in need of job opportunities, but in a time of war, a housing crisis and the rising costs of basic goods and services, it’s hard to believe that we citizens can afford to pour our hard-earned money into the simplest of activities – the line. Â But don’t worry about my seemingly nonsensical rant…I’m not a cutter.
Let’s keep the conversation going (in an orderly fashion).Â
Inflexion Point by Mark Stelzner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License based on a work at www.inflexionadvisors.com/blog
Today’s Line Up
The ad could read – “Are you either too lazy or self-important to support your own body weight? Â If yes, operators are standing by with comfortable shoes and a waterproof parka.” Â
Take this story from last fall’s Washington Post. Â It seems that lobbyists have been hiring hourly workers to secure them the choicest seats in congressional hearing rooms. Â Said the article:
But it’s not limited to our nation’s capitol.  We saw examples with the release of the iPhone last summer, an entrepreneur cashing on at the Vancouver passport office and even Comcast’s hiring of the homeless for a net neutrality hearing.  Heck, if you live in San Diego and are “reliable”, you can still earn $150 helping out a Comic Con fanatic who needs his beauty sleep.  Â
Not to deprive those in need of job opportunities, but in a time of war, a housing crisis and the rising costs of basic goods and services, it’s hard to believe that we citizens can afford to pour our hard-earned money into the simplest of activities – the line. Â But don’t worry about my seemingly nonsensical rant…I’m not a cutter.
Let’s keep the conversation going (in an orderly fashion).Â