Those visiting New York for the first time wouldn’t be completely incorrect if they figured that at its core, the city is just one long line. When I spent a summer there a couple years ago, I waited outside Lincoln Center to see some of Christian Marclay’s mesmerizing video The Clock. I tried to minimize my wait by scheduling my queueing for the off-peak time of 3 a.m., and even then, I stood by for two or three hours. Had I been there for later summers, I’m sure I would’ve found myself biding my time in anticipation of other things, like the MoMA’s “Rain Room" or, more shamefully, a cronut.
Now there’s a company to ease the impatience of New Yorkers and urbanites around the world. SOLD Inc., whose name is an acronym for “Same Ole Line Dudes,” will, at a cost of $25 for the first hour and $10 for each subsequent 30-minute period, wait in line for you. The New York company’s services are aimed at buzzed-about lines, like those for the Cronut, as well as more mundanely numbing queues, like the DMV's.
Business Insider profiled the company’s founder, Robert Samuel, earlier this week. Samuel, who can bring in up to $1,000 per week, started the firm after someone on Craigslist took up his offer to wait in line for the iPhone 5 in exchange for $100. The company has since expanded to include about a dozen of Samuel's friends—including one who was subjected to a grueling 43-hour wait for an audition on the TV show Shark Tank. Samuel says his employees are doing “a great job,” though it remains unclear exactly how one could do poorly at standing in line.