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  Edition # 98  
San Francisco, 11-03-2012

Hiring Professionals to Wait in Line
Figure [1]: Apple fanboys are lining up at the store to purchase a new product. Foto: Shane Curcuru

Michael I'm sure you've seen reports on TV about people lining up in front of the Apple store when a new product first goes on sale. They desperately want to be the first to own it, and when the iPhone 5 came out, they went as far as camping outside the store overnight!

But it goes without saying that in a country with a functioning service economy like the U.S., you don't have to tackle unpleasant chores yourself, but can pay others to do them for you. That's not limited to hiring house cleaners, but extends to dog walkers, workers mowing your lawn, grocery shoppers, or people going to the DMV for you to get your paperwork done. In this day and age, these services can be booked on the Internet, for example on taskrabbit.com, where, according to an article on Bloomberg News, you can even hire professionals to stand in line for you! For a fee of $55, someone will hold your place in line for up to four hours, and then switch places with you, so that you can enter the store chipper and well-rested in the morning to purchase your new mobile phone.

Figure [2]: Taskrabbit professionals will do unpleasant chores for you for a fee.

According to Task Rabbit, one of the most often booked services on their site is for assembling Ikea furniture. For $42, a more or less professional handyman will bring his own tools to your house and deal with those dreaded assembly instructions for furniture kits sold at the well-known Scandinavian megastore.

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