I answered a newspaper advertisement to work as a line stander. What I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I don’t know where to start. I guess I should begin by saying that there are people out there with a lot more money than sense. <br><br>My job was simple. Wait in line for them. <br><br>There are a lot of ads for this kind of thing. I assumed they were a joke at first, but after doing a little research I discovered there were actually people who did this for a living. In countries like Australia you could make good money doing it – enough to quit your day job and stand in lines for a living. <br><br>So I started looking for line standing jobs in my area, and replied to a few ads. Most of them were for people who wanted someone to wait in very ordinary lines. There was one woman who wanted someone to wait in line to buy a table at a popular breakfast café. The idea seemed absurd to me, but I applied anyway. I guess too many other people did as well, because she told me that there was quite a line of people applying. <br><br>I got a little spooked when someone claiming to be an immobilizer messaged me out of the blue. He wanted to know what my price was. I Googled the term and discovered that an immobilizer is essentially someone who breaks into your car and cripples it so that there’s no possibility of someone robbing it and driving it away.<br><br>There was another ad that I will never forget. It was from an older woman claiming that she was in a months-long relationship with a man who was significantly younger than her. She wanted someone to wait in line for her at a clinic where she was going to get Botox treatments, chemical peels, filler, and a few other things to make her look “more age appropriate for someone her age”. I’ve never heard of cosmetic treatments being referred to in that way before. <br><br>I did apply to a few of these jobs, but I ended up landing a line standing job in a completely different way. I was at a store that sold grow bags, aerogardens, and other indoor gardening equipment. I had a few questions, so I approached one of the employees. She seemed out of it, and when I asked if she was okay she told me she wasn’t doing too great. <br><br>“I just got fired from my other job”, she said. <br><br>“Sorry to hear that.” <br><br>“It’s okay. It’s for the better.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “This is a new store, and you can tell they just opened. The owner doesn’t know that I was fired from her other store and she’s so out of it I don’t think she’ll figure it out for a while. My friend works there, and she was talking about how bad the owner was doing. I think she’s just trying to keep up appearances.” She stopped for a moment. “You seem nice. I have a good feeling about you.” <br><br>“I have a good feeling about you too.” <br><br>“I know it’s kind of weird to do this, but my old boss owes me a bunch of money and she’s going to be hard to catch. She’s always on the go, and there was recently a time when I couldn’t get a hold of her for a whole week. But I know she owns a few stores around this area. I think if you camped out at her house you’d get a hold of her a lot faster than if you tried pursuing her at work.” <br><br>I understood where she was going with this. I had a friend who was owed about forty thousand dollars from his old boss, and he went through hell trying to get it back. He had to threaten to sue multiple times. It took months, and it was a huge hassle for him. I wasn’t about to turn this girl’s offer down. <br><br>“How much were you thinking?” <br><br>“Five hundred? It’s literally all I have at this point. But I’m not broke. I’m broke and in debt. She owes me eleven thousand dollars, and I promised my dad eight thousand of it. I was stupid enough to take out a loan from a person who doesn’t pay his debts. I’m on the hook for three thousand, and the rest of it is going to go to rent and food.” <br><br>I’ve never been one to turn down money, and I would have done it for her for free. I very strongly dislike people who avoid paying their debts. <br><br>“Ok, I got it. But you have to tell me a little more about your boss. Like, if I camped out at her house for a week, how likely am I to run into her?” <br><br>“She’s chaotic. I used to have to call her at random hours of the night to work at different stores that were running out of stock. She’s rich as hell and doesn’t know what she’s doing, so she’s always on the go. She changes her plans several times a day and is hard to catch. I would say that if you camped out at her house, you’d be lucky to catch her once a week. I think if you did that, you’d be better off standing outside of one of her stores. It’s slightly better, but I guarantee you’ll be standing out there for over a week.” <br><br>I didn’t like the sound of that. I had no intention of camping out anywhere, but I told her that. <br><br>“Is she in your phone contacts? Mind sending me a picture of her number?” <br><br>“Yeah, sure. I hope you get paid by her. Do you have any idea how hard she worked me? I just turned twenty one. I’m not stupid enough to think that I’m pretty much done, but I’m definitely older than I used to be. And she had me working these hours that I never thought I’d be able to handle. I’d start at four thirty and work twelve hours. Then she’d have me come in on my days off and stand outside for hours to wait for something to be delivered. She’d have me stand outside for hours to wait for something to be delivered. She’d have me drive to a store and stand outside all night. She had me work in different cities. I’d have to stay in a hotel there for a few days. I was driven to tears so many times, and she didn’t care. She didn’t care about me, and she didn’t care about her business. She cared about her appearance. She cared about her money. And that’s all she cared about.” <br><br>“But you were paid well, right?” <br><br>“No. I was overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. She didn’t care that I was living paycheck to paycheck to keep her business’s head above water. She’d get mad when I asked for a raise. She’d act like I’d asked her to jump out of a plane. She’d tell me that she paid me what she paid me and that was it. She’d say that if I didn’t like it I could leave. If I was there I would have noticed that she had a pretty big drinking problem. She was a totally functional alcoholic.” She leaned in again. “She’d be drunk sometimes and make mistakes. I’ve heard her tell multiple employees not to do a task that was crucial for operations, and then tell them to do it again. She’d do things like that and then get mad at them for it. I knew she was drunk, but she had a pretty high tolerance so you wouldn’t always be able to tell right away. I remember one time when she was telling me to do a task. I told her she had specifically instructed me not to do that, and she got mad. It was a weird attitude. I don’t know how to describe it. But it was this look of complete soberness where she knew exactly what she was doing. She was just choosing to do it anyway.” <br><br>I thanked her, took down her boss’s address, and left. I pulled the boss’s phone number up on my car’s Bluetooth, called it, and drove over to her house. <br><br>I saw her pulling into the driveway as I pulled up to the house. We locked eyes and I felt my stomach drop. She was a forty-ish looking woman. Very thin and with pretty long silver hair and very bright blue eyes. She looked like she had a lot of money, but I could tell that she was pretty drunk right now. <br><br>“You must be the line stander”, she said. <br><br>“How did you know?” <br><br>She smiled and held out her phone. The employee had texted her the picture she had sent me, along with the message “This dude is outside of your house right now.” <br><br>I cringed a little bit. I didn’t think she’d sent that message, but I guess I was wrong. I asked her why she’d done that, and she told me. <br><br>“She was a shitty employee. I used to have to call her at three in the morning sometimes to get her to come into different stores. I had to do that at random hours. She’d just bitch and complain the whole time, and then I’d have to listen to her complain for three hours straight. Do you know how fucking annoying that is?” <br><br>I shook my head. I wasn’t going to tell her that I’d already heard about what a bitch she was, even if she hadn’t done anything wrong. <br><br>“Well I’m sorry to hear that you had a bad experience. As you can tell by the name of my job, I stand in lines for a living. I don’t have much of a life outside of work. In fact, the reason I’m here right now is because one of your employees hired me to wait in line at your house. She said you owed her eleven thousand dollars.” <br><br>She cackled loudly and covered her mouth. She looked drunk and slightly manic. <br><br>“I know why she