THE idea came to Giovanni Cafaro two years ago when, like millions of his compatriots on any given day, he was waiting in a queue in Milan to pay a bill. “It occurred to me I could do the same for others,” he says.
Mr Cafaro, who had just lost his job, set about his new enterprise with gusto. He handed out flyers advertising his services and found several dozen clients. These include companies that would rather their employees did something more productive, like work. In the process, he has created a new profession: that of codista (queuer).
According to Codacons, a consumer group, Italians spend on average 400 hours a year queuing. The annual time wasted is worth €40 billion ($ 44 billion), it estimates. For decades, rich Italians have hired people to stand in line on their behalf to pay bills, send off parcels and deal with everyday bureaucracy. But Mr Cafaro has given the occupation a legal footing, with its own standardised contract, minimum pay (€10 an hour before deductions) and access to state-run industrial accident insurance (“in case, say, a codista trips on the stairs of a…
