The brightest job in Italy

When you're on vacation, you don't notice it much. But if you have something to look for in Italy that goes beyond ordering an ice cream, then you have to deal with it. The line. The line and the rule. Want internet? Then you need a codice fiscale. And if you want a codice fiscale, you have to get in line.

For every sigh, wind, puff, or fart you are placed in Italy at the end of a long line of like-minded people. And it may just be that you were sure you had everything with you and you are still sent back because you should have brought a COLOR copy of your passport. In a wonderfully fun and recommended book (‘Wegens vakantie gesloten’ by Jarl van der Ploeg) I read about Giovanni Cafaro who made a virtue out of necessity. He was fired, stood in line for the umpteenth time at the post office to send off his umpteenth job application, and saw light where others wished for a stool and a rope. He became a codista. In other words, a professional line-stander. In Italy, people spend an average of four hundred hours a year in line. That amounts to forty billion in wasted working time.

Cafaro now has a company where 500 line-standers work spread across 54 cities. Their uniform: an extra battery for their mobile phone, a newspaper, a hefty dose of patience, comfortable shoes, and knowledge of the best times to ‘enter’ (not too early, not during lunch, and never just before closing time because then the counter staff are no longer at their best).

I think it's brilliant. Just like that book by Jarl van der Ploeg, by the way.