Creative Job – Commute Helper
By Jeffrey Strain, June 21st, 2006 | 93 Comments »
Sometimes I’m amazed at the creativity of some people who earn a good living filling needs that anyone could do. I was at a gathering today when I struck up a conversation with a man who described his job as a “commute helper.”
“OK, what exactly is a commute helper?” I asked
“I help people have a smooth and quick commute,” he replied.
“How do you do that?” I asked
“I sit in their car, ” he said with a smile.
This is what happened. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the commutes in certain sections are absolutely horrendous. This guy was sitting in a traffic jam one morning watching all the people in the carpool lane drive by while he was moving at snail’s pace. He decided that he needed to get someone else in his car so that he could get to work in a timely manner using the carpool lane, and at first thought that his only option was to start a carpool.
As he thought about it more, however, he thought that he (as in himself and his body) was actually a valuable commodity and he could sell himself and that is exactly what he did. He walked to the freeway entrance and held up a sign that said,
“Traffic is bad. Spend 2 hours or pay me $10 and get there in 20 minutes”
He said the first day he was picked up within 15 minutes. When he got dropped off, he walked to the other side, held up his sign and got paid to go back the other way too. On a typical day he makes 2 to 3 round trips during the morning commute rush hour and 3 – 5 round trips during the evening rush hour. If there is an accident and traffic is really slow, his price doubles. He clears $100 – $300 a day sitting in a car so others can get to work and home faster!
I just had to laugh when I heard his explanation and how brilliantly simple it was.
That doesn’t sound like such a great job to me. I wouldn’t want to sit in a car all day for a meager couple hundred bucks.
Find a need and fill it.
Weirdest one I’ve ever heard of.
The best part is he doesn’t have to
pay taxes.
Sounds like a neat idea, but the risk is too high. Who knows how good/bad of drivers people are. And it will probably cost him a fortune to insure himself.
Arthur (Jerry Stiller) did this on an episode of “The King of Queens” years ago.
It’s not such a brilliant idea actually. In jakarta this is very common. Some roads in are designated as “3 in 1″ where in rush hour only cars with three or more people in it can go through. A lot of people offer the service to sit in your car for only 60 cents or even less. T
Will only take one person doing it to get killed getting into our out of a car and then it will outlawed. But good on him, not my cup of tea, some real freaks out there.
Next step is to take the enterprise Mexican: rent a van filled with illegals (you could easily fit 10 to 15 in the right sized van) and drive slowly down the HOV lane with signs that say honk to recieve a warm body, collect 10 dollars from for each one issued, provide the illegal with bus fare to get to a meet-up point, repeat for return-home commute traffic and pay the illegals the $2 a day that they are worth.
BTW, his math is way off: 2 to 3 round trips = 4 to 6 rides and @10 per ride, that’s only about half of the $100 low-end figure he says he’s paid.