Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk to run his new department of efficiency, or department to cut jobs, seeking to cut millions from the United States’ workforce. I have been giving it a bit of thought, and assume that people who carry out pointless work are frustrated and would be happy to take a few quid and retire.
I have identified one such post. A hundred years ago, or similar, when there were gas lights in our streets, there were people employed to wander around the roads at night with long sticks to light them, then someone else would go around in the morning to switch them off. Even after electric lights were introduced in the big towns, the gas lighters would not be dismissed as it was considered to be unfair on them, so they wandered the street making not a bit of difference to anyone.
The equivalent today is the person who sticks priority seat stickers on chairs in the underground and other trains, because quite clearly they are invisible to the naked eye. Or if they are visible, train travellers ignore them completely and think they mean to sit and stare at a mobile phone ignoring everyone around them. It must be as frustrating for the sticker stickers, so to speak, as it is for those with slightly less stability than the young people occupying the places.
I should declare an interest, but won’t. Do people think the stickers were placed there because they couldn’t find anywhere else to put them? I would love to know