Useless Jobs. Saturday April 23, 2011

You can tell you live in a low wage economy by the sort of jobs that people are (presumably) paid to do.

Our first experience of low wages was our stint in the Philippines. In fact, having worked in London and having spent most of my salary on nannies, cleaners, ironing ladies and gardeners, when Steve asked “how do you fancy a move to the Philippines?” my first thought was “Filipino maids”.

At one time during our stint there, there were 13 on the payroll. We had four guards in rotation, a driver, a pool boy, a gardener, two live in maids, and then on a periodic basis, a cook, sewing lady, manicurist and a masseuse. They were all very good, very cheap and made our lives very easy.

We encountered a number of jobs that made one wonder, why on earth is someone paid to do that? Of course the answer is that it is so inexpensive to employ someone, it makes sense to do it. So here is a selection of jobs that we came across.

Golf is an ever growing sport in the Philippines, but is the preserve of the wealthy. At the driving range, there are young girls whose job it is to tee up the ball to save you the trouble of having to bend down and do it yourself. Mind you, they don’t have tees. Instead they have a trowel and a little pile of mud and beautifully craft a tee using the trowel and their fingers. Just imaging sitting on the ground, hoping that a golfer hits the ball and not you.

Also on the golf courses, as well as a caddy, you often find young women holding umbrellas to keep the sun off the golfers. The Japanese living in Manila would also have someone carrying a large container of ice – not exactly sure what they did with it, but sometimes you would find yourself putting around a small mound of ice on the green. In fact, you could always tell a group of Japanese golfers – it would look as if small army was invading the green. As Steve always justified, to himself and anyone else that questioned “why would you pay someone to do that?” Well, it gives them employment, a purpose to get out of bed in the morning and maybe they will find a rich husband.

In Turkey, it used to be young boys doing these sorts of jobs – particularly shoe shine boys who would appear on every corner and try and overcharge you for cleaning your shoes. A few well chosen words of Turkish were usually enough.

New Jersey cannot be said to be a low wage economy, but even here, we never had to fill our petrol/gas tanks because the law decrees that in New Jersey at least, there had to be a pump attendant to do it for you at no extra cost. Imagine my horror in driving into a gas station in Washington DC and being charged 50 cents per gallon extra to have someone fill my tank. I couldn’t get back to New Jersey quickly enough.

And so to Sao Paulo, which has to be the leader in employing people to do things that one can easily do oneself. One of my favourites is driving into a car park where you have to push a button to obtain the ticket that opens the barrier. Here, not only do you have someone to push the button for you, but they even do it where the parking is free. There is then another person at the exit ready to take your ticket from you and insert it into the slot to raise the barrier and let you out. One morning I was with some friends and the woman taking the tickets was plucking hairs out of her chin as she waited for drivers to come along and hand her their tickets. Obviously business was slow that day.

In the park where I walk the dog there are public toilets dotted around the place. Regularly, there are ladies stationed inside the toilets handing out toilet paper. Now, I could understand if the paper was:

a. Worth stealing or
b. Needed to be limited because people take too much

But here is the thing - the paper is so disgusting, no one would want to steal it and secondly, the amount they give you if far more that you could even need. So why bother? It- beats me

In Sao Paulo, there is a great attempt to preserve what little bit of green space there is left. It has to be said that there isn’t much but in the centre of the roads, they try to preserve grass verges. They have yet to hear of sit-on mowers, or in fact, mowers of any description for that matter. Instead, they use weed whackers/strimmers which is quite ridiculous when you think of the size of the city. In addition to the guys that are actually doing the weed whacking, there are usually a couple of guys holding a big green screen between where the work is being done and the road – presumably to stop any grass being blown onto the oncoming traffic. So for every weed whacker, there are two more guys to protect the public.

There are a lot of houses and apartments for sale around us. There are realtors offices dotted around the city and outside the houses there are signs to denote which realtor is listing the house. But in addition, most houses for sale that are empty, have a sun shade outside, and every day, someone comes and opens the house and then sits there, all day, waiting for people to come and look at the house. There is one road near us where the same realtor is listing three houses and outside each one is a sun shade and a man sitting there. You think within the space of 100 yards, one person could look after all three, but clearly not.

At the weekend you see kids standing at the street corners with signs hanging from their necks shaped as arrows pointing towards a new development of apartments being sold. It makes me think that is cheaper to employ someone all day, than the cost of putting up a static sign pointing the way. They always look bored to death as they stand in amongst the traffic and swing their arrows.

But the best job I have come across has to be the guy at Burger King. We have a drive through Burger King but whoever developed the site, didn’t have enough room to do a regular drive through. Instead, there is a turn table. They employ someone to wave you onto a turntable and then run into his kiosk and press a switch that turns your car through 90 degrees or so, and then waves you off so that you can buy your burger. I have known people that have no desire to eat a hamburger, but the whole experience of being lined up on a turntable in a car and moved, is worth the price of a burger.

Only in Sao Paulo!