Line stander

Line stander, queue stander, line sitter or queue professional is an informal occupation which came to an existence out of the necessity to stand long times in queues. One person would stand in a line in place of another person often for personal gain. Modern times, the job often involves waiting for the release of a movie, games console, or monetary gain through being paid to hold a space for someone else.

Line sitting at the Sydney Australia Apple Store for the launch of the iPad 2

Practice

Line sitting is often a paid endeavor, with companies recruiting people, sometimes homeless people, to sit in lines for a price.[1] In some circumstances, people can make sufficient money to line sit professionally.[2]

In rare cases, people also choose to sit in line for non-monetary purposes, e.g. for media attention at major events, Greg Packer is an example of this.[3] There are also social media personalities who would queuing for the latest consumer electronics and then destroying them in front of the queuing crowd for notoriety or content. "Smash Our Stuff" is the name a group of Canadians go by, who have in the past been paid to smash a brand new iPod Nano out of the box.

The practice of line sitting has drawn academic research. A study conducted by Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University employs queueing theory and game theory to study the economic and operational dynamics of line sitting.[4] The researchers contrast line sitting with the commonly used pay-for-priority scheme and show why line sitting can be a win-win for the service provider and customers alike.

Around the world

Poland

In Poland, this peculiar occupation (Polish: stacz kolejkowy) was reported as a neologism[5] during the early 1980s. By the end of the Communist regime there were severe shortages of consumer goods.[6] With the transition to a market economy, shortages gradually went away, but the business opportunities for linestanders remained.

A Polish professional line stander, Tadeusz Żak, has said that his profession requires certain personal traits: honesty, credibility, activity, persistence, and perseverance. He says he once stood in line for 40 hours. His specialization is lines in hospitals for registration to high-demand and rare specialists.[7] In 2013 Żak lost his 13-year-old business, because local hospitals introduced advance registration.[8] Fortunately, Polish newspapers made "pan Tadek" a celebrity, and he started receiving various offers, some unrelated to his "business", for example, a role of a marionette in opera Rigoletto (because he is a dwarf). In 2014 he even accepted an invitation from the Democratic Left Alliance to stand for the city council in his home city of Tarnov.[9]

Recently, line standers have started to take advantage of modern technology. In 2015, one of the winners of the Business Intelligence Hackathon API (BIHAPI) contest in Poland was a mobile app with a recognizable name "Stacz Kolejkowy" ("line stander").[10][11]

United States

The practice of "linestanding" or "seatholding" is a service provided in Washington, D.C. to lobbyists, corporate legislative offices, non-profit organizations, lawyers, and other people having an interest in matters being debated or bills being marked up by the United States House of Representatives or United States Senate. The linestanding company will send someone to Capitol Hill to stand in line well in advance of the hearing or mark-up to help the client gain entry into the hearing room with a good seat in the visitors gallery.[12] In 2007 it was proposed that linestanding for registered lobbyists be made illegal and that they should have to stand in line with everyone else.[13] This practice had reportedly existed for 20 years, but it attracted media attention in March of 2012, when during the Supreme Court hearings on the Affordable Care Act, professional linestanders stood there for four days.[14][15]

In New York, a company called SOLD Inc, (short for Same Ole Line Dudes) claims to be "New York's only professional line sitting and line management business, however, they are not the only business, but certainly the most successful.. They have waited for iPhones, Saturday Night Live tickets, concerts, Cronuts etc. Its founder, Robert Samuel came up with the idea after offering to wait for the iPhone 5 in 2012 and was continually paid for various spaces in line. Not intending to purchase the phone originally, he ended up having enough money to purchase one when the store opened the next day.[16]

On October 18, 2007, Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri proposed that linestanding for registered lobbyists be made illegal. Her feeling was that lobbyists should have to stand in line with everyone else.[17][18] A linestanding company wrote in response to McCaskill's bill that eliminating the linestanding industry would eliminate hundreds of entry-level jobs and increase costs for all involved.[19]

In March 2012, the Supreme Court heard an unprecedented three days of oral arguments in regards to the Affordable Care Act (President Obama's Health Care Reform Law). Linestanders stood on 1st Street NE for four days holding spaces for various State Attorneys General, industry lobbyists, healthcare professors, and other interested parties.[20]

Other examples of linestanding services include a service launched in Birmingham, AL as a response to the long wait times at the Jefferson County Courthouse Department of Motor Vehicles.[21]

Venezuela

In 2015, a line stander from Venezuela, Krisbell Villarroel, a 22-year-old single mother of two small children, made the news around the globe. Her "business model", based on consumer good shortage, is different. Early in the morning she is on the phone to figure out what and where is to be on sale, then she stands in lines to buy various stuff and resell it to her customers who don't have time to stand in lines.[22][23] She is one of many representatives of a new occupation of "profesionales de la fila" ("queue professionals") in Venezuela.[24] Reportedly, a number of restaurants in Caracas have a dedicated person on their staff whose duties are solely to stand in lines in supermarkets to get necessary supplies.[24]

Italy

In 2014, all major Italian media outlets covered Giovanni Cafaro, "il Primo Codista Italiano" (the First Italian Queue Professional).[25] He even started giving classes for aspiring line-standers.[26][27]

Russia

In Russian, the word ocherednik (from the word очередь, "queue") has long referred to a person who is listed in some formal queue. In modern Russia professional ocheredniks call themselves by the Spanish term "tramitador" (трамитадор), which (in Spanish) refers to a person who pushes the paperwork through a bureaucratic process (trámite).[28][29] While the serviced queues include tickets for sports, pop concerts, etc., a large number of queues may be created by the sloppiness of Russian bureaucracy: most popular requests for tramitadors are for queues to tax inspectorate and the recorder of deeds, followed by the Federal Migration Service and the passport office.[30]

See also

References
  1. Liptak, Adam (2013-04-15). "Supreme Court Spectator Line Acts as a Toll Booth". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  2. Lim, Louisa (2011-07-25). "China's Professional Queuers Paid To Stand Around". NPR. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  3. Kahney, Leander (2010-04-03). "Professional Line Sitter Greg Packer Bumped From Front Of iPad Queue". Cult of Mac. Archived from the original on 2015-11-30. Retrieved 2015-11-30.
  4. Cui, Shiliang; Wang, Zhongbin; Yang, Luyi (2019). "The Economics of Line-Sitting". Management Science. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2018.3212.
  5. Alicja Zagrodnikowa, "Nowe wyrazy i wyrażenia w prasie" ("New Phrases and Expressions in Press"), 1982, p. 332
  6. Kultura, 1986, p. 97
  7. "Profesjonalny stacz kolejkowy z Tarnowa: Najdłużej stałem 40 godzin, często zarzucają mi, że dużo biorę"
  8. "Tarnów: kolejkowy stacz Tadeusz Żak straci zajęcie"
  9. "Stacz kolejkowy chce być..."
  10. "BIHAPI –najlepsze aplikacje społecznie użyteczne"
  11. "The Winners of the Orange Business Intelligence Hackathon API (BIHAPI)", February 25, 2015
  12. "The life of a professional line-stander"
  13. "McCaskill's press release at Senate.gov". Archived from the original on 2017-11-07. Retrieved 2015-05-17.
  14. "The Bizarre Business Of Professional Line-Standing"
  15. "Professional line-standers and their subs hold spots outside Supreme Court"
  16. Bernstein, Jacob (2014-10-03). "A Professional Line Sitter Throws His Wait Around (Published 2014)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  17. "McCaskill's press release at Senate.gov". Archived from the original on 2017-11-07. Retrieved 2007-10-23.
  18. The Washington Post reported on McCaskill's proposal
  19. "Response to S. 2177" (PDF).
  20. "The Bizarre Business Of Professional Line-Standing". Capitol Hill News. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  21. http://dontwait4.it Archived 2016-06-10 at the Wayback Machine
  22. "People are becoming professional queuers in Venezuela"
  23. "Najbardziej osobliwy zawód świata? Oceńcie sami!"
  24. "‘Profesionales de la fila’, el nuevo oficio en Venezuela"
  25. "Il Codista"
  26. "A lezione per diventare «codisti» Giovanni Cafaro, disoccupato, si è inventato un lavoro: fa le code per gli altri a 10 euro l'ora. Adesso si è messo a insegnare il mestiere. Noi siamo stati a lezione da lui"
  27. "Mamma, da grande farò il codista" ("Mommy, I will grow up to become a codista")
  28. "Народная экономика" узнала, кто стоит в очередях за деньги"
  29. В Омске становятся популярными трамитадоры
  30. "Очереди как бизнес. Трамитадоры зарабатывают на бездействии чиновников"


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