Standing around

Driving around Little Rock, I found - to my horror - that I had become more or less inured to one of the (many) things that shocked and disgusted me in this city when I first arrived. In this case, what I'm referring to is the poor bastards employed as living billboards - hired to stand 9 hours a day holding a sign announcing Discount Jewellery Sale Last Days! or Special Underwear Sale Now On, or just Liberty First Tax Services!!

When I first got here, they would just stand at busy corners, holding the signs, then some bright spark got the idea that if they waved their hand, or the sign, it would attract more attention, so now the poor bastards have to spend their time standing, waving and trying to draw attention, and smiling, smiling, smiling the whole time.

Just as a matter of course, I make a point of avoiding firms that use this sort of low-rent, contemptuous advertising, but when I think seriously about it, it makes my skin absolutely crawl. In the richest country in the world, this is the best use they can find for so much labour? I don't know how much these poor buggers are getting paid, but I'm sure it's not enough: they are out there, literally rain or shine, even in the freezing colds and standing ankle-deep in snow.

Hell, I used to think burger-flipping at McDonalds for minimum wages was a bottom-of-the-barrel sort of job, but this stuff has really lowered the standard.

And it also - of course - gives the lie to that ancient canard beloved of the Right, that people will just sit around and do nothing if you pay the unemployed any sort of benefit, however minimal. These people are doing an excruciating, astoundingly dull job in miserable conditions, just to earn some pittance.

I suppose there may be a few people who are suited to this, that this might represent a good job or even the peak of their abilities, but ... one, or maybe two, in a city the size of Little Rock, not the 60 or 80 people who seem to be doing it every weekend (and about half that weekdays I think).