You can pay people to wait in Boxing Day sales queues

If you’re already planning your Boxing Day sales strategy, listen up.

No one really wants to stand in the cold waiting for the doors to open to grab that must-have discounted item.

And now you don’t have to with the rise of the professional queuer.

A man in New York has shown just how lucrative the queuing market is by setting up a company whose employees will wait in a line for hours – even days – to secure you the ultimate present.

After auctioning his queuing services off for the release of the iPhone in 2011, Robert Samuel set up Same Ole Line Dudes.

“I put up a Craigslist post and someone had me waiting in line for them. I charged £75 for however many hours it took, I saw it as a quick buck – but after four to five hours in – the person’s online order went through with apple.com,” he told Caters.

“But in good faith he paid me anyway and encouraged me to sell my spot – by the end I had made £315 and bought the new iPhone myself.”

Once he realised he could make some real money, Robert decided to keep things going and now has around 40 employees on his books.

“It started slow for me but after cronuts came out, I started recruiting friends to help out because I couldn’t meet the demand for orders.”

“From there I knew I wanted to be the guy you always thought about with a line or queue in New York, five years later my dream came to fruition. Now people recognise me on the street from YouTube and more.”

He says his team queue up for everything from restaurants that don’t take reservations to limited edition drops and meet and greets with celebrities.

Their waiting time can range from two hours to days. The longest they’ve ever waited is four days for the latest release of the iPhone X, charging the client £1,500 in the process.

“People are really passionate about a wide range of things so one day we could be lining up for Star Wars collectables and a free sample the next,” he continued.

“We once lined up to get a free lipstick for someone, I don’t know the price of the lipstick, but they probably paid more for us to wait than what would have been the cost of the lipstick. We even wait for free food samples – some people can’t leave their desk to get a pizza, sandwich or something else so we do it for them.”

If you want to get into the professional queuing market, Robert says his team can make between £18 and £300 a week.

Although he’s based in New York, there are similar services in the UK that’ll stop you ever having to wait in line.

Task Rabbit allows you to ask for a professional queuer while Bidvine also offers a queueing service.

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