8 ms·

Is visited the USA just once (in 2003), but there was an old man that took my bag off the end of the luggage belt at the airport and handed it to me. I could ea

by WJW 9y ago

Is visited the USA just once (in 2003), but there was an old man that took my bag off the end of the luggage belt at the airport and handed it to me. I could easily have picked it up myself, but he was there for those 30 centimeters of bag travel. I remember being amazed about it and remarking the pointlessness of that job to my coworkers.

cema 9y ago
Strange experience indeed. I do not think I have ever seen that in any of USA airports, large or small.
ReverseCold 9y ago
> the pointlessness of that job to my coworkers What if you were older/disabled and had trouble lifting a medium-large suitcase? Seems like not the most useless job in the world, especially since it helps keep things moving in the airport and reduces congestion by getting people their bags slightly faster.
ctime 9y ago
I've never once seen this in my life (I typically have over 100k miles of airline travel per year) and have been traveling for work in the US since 2000. I don't understand how this scenario would play out, does he just grab a bag at random and hold it over his head? Read off the tag? Most people I know would be incensed if someone else were to grab their bag off the luggage belt. You might be confusing this with curb side check in, which is a service airlines use as a convenience to customers checking bags (so they don't need to go to the ticket counter with heavy/numerous bags ).
- michaelbuckbee 9y ago
  It's something that has disappeared over time (like elevator attendants). If I had to guess it was a holdover from before there were actually conveyor belts and porters manually pushed out cards of luggage to stops and helped people with them.
- baxtr 9y ago
  Similar to people who pack your groceries into bags at cashier. Have only seen this in the states, nowhere else
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Packing your own groceries is work and boring though.
    - gtvwill 9y ago
      If packing your own groceries fills your definition of work and doesn't just come under "shit you just do to get something from one place to another because you need it in your life". You REALLY need to get out and perform a variety of jobs. Like damn you gotta be about as useless as tits on a bull if you think pulling the food your going to eat that is NECESSARY FOR YOUR SURVIVAL off a bench and into a bag is work.
      - rayiner 9y ago
        Growing food is necessary for my survival but I don’t do that myself. Grocery bagging is also not trivial. You can’t just throw things into a bag in random order, you need to think about it. A well packed set of shopping bags is a big convenience, and I don’t want to spend the bandwidth to do it. There is a big difference between a job that creates convenience for other people and one that’s redundant or pointless.
        gkya 9y ago
        > You can’t just throw things into a bag in random order, you need to think about it. A well packed set of shopping bags is a big convenience, and I don’t want to spend the bandwidth to do it. Please tell me that you say this only to win the argument, because, come on. Putting things into something else is as trivial as it gets, and I can assure you that, even though I have never seen one, a person whose job is to fill the bits someone else bought into bags for them will give absolutely zero fucks about how he puts them things into them bags. Except maybe it's somewhere like Harrods, I guess, if they are paid high enough (now I recalled this: there was a comment or an article recently about an employee of Harrods whose job was to get fired when customers came to complain about other personnel).
- ilkan 9y ago
  I don't travel much. But they are called porters (or, redcaps in Barbados because they wear red caps for easy identification). Let's say you are elderly, tired or have a lot of baggage. You wave a porter over, he or she takes the indicated bags off the airport conveyor belt, loads them onto a trolley, wheels them through Customs, and loads them onto the taxi for you. I've seen elderly, handicapped or heavily burdened (eg couples with 3 kids and 10 bags) use them. How else would one get by?
- rdl 9y ago
  Baggage handlers at airports pull bags off the belts and put them in a line nearby (and sometimes give them to passengers) when there's a need to clear the belt, or when they don't have other work to do (at some airports). This is mainly to keep the belt from filling up. They also sometimes do this when looking for a bag for transfer (which failed to get interlined correctly or something, or when an elite has a connection but there's no interline agreement.)
  - therein 9y ago
    I am sure these people attend other tasks once that's done. They likely also have other belt-related tasks to deal with behind the doors.
Thlom 9y ago
I'm always a bit taken back when visiting the toilet at clubs and some restaurants when I'm in the UK as there's a gentleman sitting by the sink handing out towels and stuff. Very strange and utterly useless. Not sure if he's paid by the club or lives of tip, but it makes me really uncomfortable. I just want to take a piss and wash my hands, not have an awkward conversation with a towel handler.
- listentojohan 9y ago
  He or she is just living off of the tips, and of the selling of perfume and mints.
- richev 9y ago
  I've always understood that this person's actual job was making sure that no-one was taking drugs in / vandalizing / doing anything illegal in the bathrooms. They're there so the owner of the club/restaurant can relax, not you.
  - rkuykendall-com 9y ago
    If this were true, there wouldn't be so much emphases on tipping. Right now, I feel like this guy is useless and I don't want to give him money and I feel bad about that, like by not paying him I'm calling him useless. If it were for the owner, and that was clear, I'd feel great because I was making his job easier by not causing any trouble or mess, and on top of that, hey thanks for the towel!
- ytwySXpMbS 9y ago
  I've never seen this in my life in the UK. There is a guy watching over the people in the toilets in the clubs near me, but you don't talk to him and he doesn't hand you anything. Even if he did hand you something, you don't have to have a conversation with him.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    OTOH last time I was in St.Pancras there was a guy collecting the fees to use the washroom and keeping things tidied up. People in the US would be outraged to pay for using a bathroom under those circumstances. Japan can be even worse. I’ve seen it at hotel seven when you’re eating at the hotel restaurant.
richev 9y ago
I've seen this at airports that had seemingly small or poor quality luggage belts, and figured that their actual role was to help ensure the smooth running of things and stop the belt jamming up with too many bags.
jopsen 9y ago
In the US you often see people holding a sign saying "slow" next to construction or road work. This is a job that could literally be automated with a pole :)
- ouid 9y ago
  Those signs say stop on the other side and are used in conjuction with someone on the other end of the construction holding up the opposite sign so that a single lane can be used to handle traffic in two directions. That job would need to be automated with a traffic light.
  - kleiba 9y ago
    In Germany, no-one is holding stop/slow signs at any construction site. This job is universally done by portable traffic lights.
    - intended 9y ago
      But then again, it’s Germans.
    - intended 9y ago
      But then again, you are talking about Germans in Germany. Order is baked in.
    - jpetso 9y ago
      In Germany, people respect traffic lights even when there's no one there to enforce your good behavior.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    A smart traffic light that can count how any cars enter and exit the zone. It's perfectly possible to automate, but it may not be the best ROI around.
    - Clubber 9y ago
DrScump 9y ago
If this was in the unsecured area, that may not have been an employee, but a stranger trolling for tips.
llukas 9y ago
When several big planes clog US customs then there are no passengers to pick up bags from the luggage belt and it can fill in entirely. So maybe this man is not needed all the time but definitely lack of somebody to unload the belt would cause problems.
rusty__ 9y ago
I find the concept of having to have someone pump gas for you (by law) another strange example of a pointless job, I'm quite capable of pumping my own gas.

by WJW 9y ago

cema 9y ago

Strange experience indeed. I do not think I have ever seen that in any of USA airports, large or small.

ReverseCold 9y ago

> the pointlessness of that job to my coworkers What if you were older/disabled and had trouble lifting a medium-large suitcase? Seems like not the most useless job in the world, especially since it helps keep things moving in the airport and reduces congestion by getting people their bags slightly faster.

ctime 9y ago

I've never once seen this in my life (I typically have over 100k miles of airline travel per year) and have been traveling for work in the US since 2000. I don't understand how this scenario would play out, does he just grab a bag at random and hold it over his head? Read off the tag? Most people I know would be incensed if someone else were to grab their bag off the luggage belt. You might be confusing this with curb side check in, which is a service airlines use as a convenience to customers checking bags (so they don't need to go to the ticket counter with heavy/numerous bags ).

michaelbuckbee 9y ago
It's something that has disappeared over time (like elevator attendants). If I had to guess it was a holdover from before there were actually conveyor belts and porters manually pushed out cards of luggage to stops and helped people with them.
baxtr 9y ago
Similar to people who pack your groceries into bags at cashier. Have only seen this in the states, nowhere else
- rayiner 9y ago
  Packing your own groceries is work and boring though.
  - gtvwill 9y ago
    If packing your own groceries fills your definition of work and doesn't just come under "shit you just do to get something from one place to another because you need it in your life". You REALLY need to get out and perform a variety of jobs. Like damn you gotta be about as useless as tits on a bull if you think pulling the food your going to eat that is NECESSARY FOR YOUR SURVIVAL off a bench and into a bag is work.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      Growing food is necessary for my survival but I don’t do that myself. Grocery bagging is also not trivial. You can’t just throw things into a bag in random order, you need to think about it. A well packed set of shopping bags is a big convenience, and I don’t want to spend the bandwidth to do it. There is a big difference between a job that creates convenience for other people and one that’s redundant or pointless.
      - gkya 9y ago
        > You can’t just throw things into a bag in random order, you need to think about it. A well packed set of shopping bags is a big convenience, and I don’t want to spend the bandwidth to do it. Please tell me that you say this only to win the argument, because, come on. Putting things into something else is as trivial as it gets, and I can assure you that, even though I have never seen one, a person whose job is to fill the bits someone else bought into bags for them will give absolutely zero fucks about how he puts them things into them bags. Except maybe it's somewhere like Harrods, I guess, if they are paid high enough (now I recalled this: there was a comment or an article recently about an employee of Harrods whose job was to get fired when customers came to complain about other personnel).
ilkan 9y ago
I don't travel much. But they are called porters (or, redcaps in Barbados because they wear red caps for easy identification). Let's say you are elderly, tired or have a lot of baggage. You wave a porter over, he or she takes the indicated bags off the airport conveyor belt, loads them onto a trolley, wheels them through Customs, and loads them onto the taxi for you. I've seen elderly, handicapped or heavily burdened (eg couples with 3 kids and 10 bags) use them. How else would one get by?
rdl 9y ago
Baggage handlers at airports pull bags off the belts and put them in a line nearby (and sometimes give them to passengers) when there's a need to clear the belt, or when they don't have other work to do (at some airports). This is mainly to keep the belt from filling up. They also sometimes do this when looking for a bag for transfer (which failed to get interlined correctly or something, or when an elite has a connection but there's no interline agreement.)
- therein 9y ago
  I am sure these people attend other tasks once that's done. They likely also have other belt-related tasks to deal with behind the doors.

Thlom 9y ago

I'm always a bit taken back when visiting the toilet at clubs and some restaurants when I'm in the UK as there's a gentleman sitting by the sink handing out towels and stuff. Very strange and utterly useless. Not sure if he's paid by the club or lives of tip, but it makes me really uncomfortable. I just want to take a piss and wash my hands, not have an awkward conversation with a towel handler.

listentojohan 9y ago
He or she is just living off of the tips, and of the selling of perfume and mints.
richev 9y ago
I've always understood that this person's actual job was making sure that no-one was taking drugs in / vandalizing / doing anything illegal in the bathrooms. They're there so the owner of the club/restaurant can relax, not you.
- rkuykendall-com 9y ago
  If this were true, there wouldn't be so much emphases on tipping. Right now, I feel like this guy is useless and I don't want to give him money and I feel bad about that, like by not paying him I'm calling him useless. If it were for the owner, and that was clear, I'd feel great because I was making his job easier by not causing any trouble or mess, and on top of that, hey thanks for the towel!
ytwySXpMbS 9y ago
I've never seen this in my life in the UK. There is a guy watching over the people in the toilets in the clubs near me, but you don't talk to him and he doesn't hand you anything. Even if he did hand you something, you don't have to have a conversation with him.
- ghaff 9y ago
  OTOH last time I was in St.Pancras there was a guy collecting the fees to use the washroom and keeping things tidied up. People in the US would be outraged to pay for using a bathroom under those circumstances. Japan can be even worse. I’ve seen it at hotel seven when you’re eating at the hotel restaurant.

richev 9y ago

I've seen this at airports that had seemingly small or poor quality luggage belts, and figured that their actual role was to help ensure the smooth running of things and stop the belt jamming up with too many bags.

jopsen 9y ago

In the US you often see people holding a sign saying "slow" next to construction or road work. This is a job that could literally be automated with a pole :)

ouid 9y ago
Those signs say stop on the other side and are used in conjuction with someone on the other end of the construction holding up the opposite sign so that a single lane can be used to handle traffic in two directions. That job would need to be automated with a traffic light.
- kleiba 9y ago
  In Germany, no-one is holding stop/slow signs at any construction site. This job is universally done by portable traffic lights.
  - intended 9y ago
    But then again, it’s Germans.
  - intended 9y ago
    But then again, you are talking about Germans in Germany. Order is baked in.
  - jpetso 9y ago
    In Germany, people respect traffic lights even when there's no one there to enforce your good behavior.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  A smart traffic light that can count how any cars enter and exit the zone. It's perfectly possible to automate, but it may not be the best ROI around.
  - Clubber 9y ago

DrScump 9y ago

If this was in the unsecured area, that may not have been an employee, but a stranger trolling for tips.

llukas 9y ago

When several big planes clog US customs then there are no passengers to pick up bags from the luggage belt and it can fill in entirely. So maybe this man is not needed all the time but definitely lack of somebody to unload the belt would cause problems.

rusty__ 9y ago

I find the concept of having to have someone pump gas for you (by law) another strange example of a pointless job, I'm quite capable of pumping my own gas.