Getting Paid To Line-Up, What Next?

By Patrick Hind -

If someone offered you a fairly good rate of pay to stand in a queue for an excruciatingly long time, would you do it? It seems that 'queue-sitting' is becoming a growing phenomenon, used by rich people for both convenience and commercial purposes. The old and the young are being paid to stand in line, while the people paying them forget all about it, safe in the knowledge that they'll get what they want without having to wait in line. It may seem insane and fairly amusing, buts it's a reality.

The queue sitters have recently come to the attention of the public again with the launch of the Playstation 3 (PS3) in Japan. The BBC reported that crowds were large and demand was high, but that the demographic of the queues seemed grey. A website titled Kotaku.com covered the launch in immense detail and one of the site's Tokyo readers, Dirk Benedict, emailed with his acute observations.

It turns out that some of the first people to buy an all-singing-all-dancing PS3 were elderly and they didn't buy games nor speak Japanese. Mr Benedict noted: "The men and women standing patiently in the front of the line either didn't understand what she (Japanese rep) was saying, or didn't care - the first buyers of PS3 were largely elderly Chinese men and young Chinese women with shaky Japanese language skills."

Mr Benedict went on to say: "Hardcore gamers are not here waiting in line overnight, buying a first-run PS3 and running home to play some good old next-gen gaming. Rather, opportunistic Japanese businessmen have the largest presence, hiring poor Chinese men and women to wait in line for a PS3, one which will later be sold on web auctions to wealthy gamers around the world for exorbitant amounts of money."

One poor Chinese chap was reportedly asked questions by reps as he stood clutching the new box. People asked him what games he was looking forward to playing and if he was excited. He said nothing and probably looked rather blank. It appears that these people had been paid to queue, to buy something they didn't know which would then arrive back in the hands of a business person to sell on.

It's easy to chuckle at this Japanese issue, but the problem is it's not a Japanese phenomenon, but a global and British one. In an article from the Times in April 2004, Shirley English investigated the essence of queue-sitting and the students at Edinburgh University who were getting paid to do it. "It was easy money, but I didn't tell my parents because I thought they might think it was dangerous," one student told the paper.

According to Ms English's report, students were paid money by people who were "too posh to queue" in order to secure the best flats on the housing market. Some students saw ads on their university notice board and you can only imagine what they said. 'Get paid to stand in queue' or 'person required to stand in queue – minimum wage paid'.

It's a bizarre world, perhaps next we'll be offered the chance to stand on tubes for people, maybe order someone's burger, or attend a play with someone's wife. When will this life outsourcing end?