Line stander

In Poland, this peculiar occupation (Polish: stacz kolejkowy) was reported as a neologism[1] during the early 1980s. By the end of the Communist regime there were severe shortages of consumer goods.[2] 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.[3] In 2013 Żak lost his 13-year-old business, because local hospitals introduced advance registration.[4] 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.[5]

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").[6][7]

The practice of "linestanding" or "seatholding" is a service provided in Washington, D.C. to lobbyists, and other people having an interest in matters being debated 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 to help the client gain entry into the hearing room with a good seat in the visitors gallery.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10][11]

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.[12][13] She is one of many representatives of a new occupation of "profesionales de la fila" ("queue professionals") in Venezuela.[14] 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.[14]

In 2014, all major Italian media outlets covered Giovanni Cafaro, "il Primo Codista Italiano" (the First Italian Queue Professional).[15] He even started giving classes for aspiring line-standers.[16][17]

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).[18][19] 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.[20]

• Cutting in line
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• Kolejka (game)