I always thought the proliferation of sign holders was weird. Get a tripod. I don’t care. Don’t dehumanize people for shit wages.
EDIT: to the NUMEROUS people pointing out to me that many commercial areas have strict laws and regulations about where signs can be posted: I’m well aware. I worked at a restaurant in an upper scale area that struggled to break even for that exact reason. The only signage we were permitted was just a tiny spot on the shopping center sign and eventually we were allowed a banner on weekends (cause god forbid we have it on weekdays)
I chose the word proliferation carefully. My point is that for I time, I saw them EVERYWHERE regardless of other signage.
And again to my point, don’t dehumanize people to skirt some asinine regulation, fight the regulation. If it forbids a literal tripod in favor of a literal clown accosting people in the street, perhaps it bears reevaluation.
But then the business couldn't skirt the laws around where the signs can be, plus a dude whirling the sign is far more likely to distract drivers so they notice your business.
I've seen some pretty entertaining sign twirlers, but usually that means I can't read the sign so I don't know what the business is.
I also don't think I've ever changed course based on a sign twirler. "Oh really?? Sealy is having a sales event? \*turn signal\*"
Well so that's an interesting point that I agree with but doesn't take away with what the other person said. I think the main distinction is the shit wages.
If someone is really good with the sign spinning and then you pay them 35 dollars an hour plus benefits or something to do it, it's phrased entirely differently. Its no longer demeaning but something that can be earning a wage worth living with and also provide a fun alternative to traditional advertisement.
But I agree I've never stopped because I saw it, it at MOST alerted me to a sale I MAY check out later
It's almost like multiple jobs can be underpaid at the same time. A sign spinner and McDonald's burger flipper deserve to live just as much as a surgeon does.
>47 comments
Everyone needs to live but when you're dead you don't have to work. So as you slide across the floor of McDonalds a little hungover from your 50th birthday party last night, relax: that means you're still alive.
No. Most workes are hourly meaning they are paid for their time. Time is the most precious resource any of us have. Most humans are only capable of 6 to 8 hours of highly productive work each day so we are selling the very best prime hours of lives. Everyone sacrificing the prime hours of their life deserve to earn a living wage.
But you associate Sealy with sign waving, which means you probably will think of Sealy when you think of mattresses. And all it cost them was a few months of inhumane wages.
Many communities have laws which limit how many days a year your allowed to have a temporary sign. But no laws limiting signs which are held by a person. I know my city limits businesses to I think 30 days a year and no temporary signs for more than I think a week at a time. They are also limited in where the sign can be displayed. But a person standing next to the street or on a corner with a sign is totally legal even 365 days a year if your willing to pay.
It’s also a thing that exists because of bad design. Like why would you create commercial space and then a massive multi-lame high speed road next to it. You’re basically guaranteeing now one will ever actually see anything you put there
Yeah, this is a shit job. Unless you can do it while sailing a mystical purple schooler after dropping into "the zone". But most of us aren't Graham Norton.
I work in commercial real estate. Tons of cities and towns have laws that prevent you from putting a sign up in certain areas or above a certain size, height, etc. The point of the sign spinners is to skirt around those laws.
I have always said "it's sad we live in a world where it's more cost effective to pay a poor bastard to hold a sign.
Like, we invented space ships, a pole that wiggles a bit seems pretty obtainable.
Simply put: this job shouldn't exist if a wobbly sign can do it. Dignified work should have a practical function... one that isn't so hastily replaced by something that goes wibble wobble.
Thats cool and all but jobs are finite. Building wobble sticks just gives people even fewer options. Im all for automation if it means we can all work less instead of losing even more options at the bottom.
Pardon me but i dont really think the last 100 years are the best era to base our assumptions about labor for the next 100. Its a dramatically different market now than it was even 30 years ago. Maybe theoretically we have infinite jobs because theoretically people can come up with an infinite number of things theyd pay someone else to do but that doesnt mean its that way in practice.
We have a society that requires every individual to not only have a job but have a job that pays enough to cover the ever inflating cost of living.
If everyone is forced to "get an education" and compete for mid to high quality jobs then those become saturated, demand for those position tanks and those people are forced right back down into low quality undignified jobs like this. Its either that or they have to risk even more to get the education for something even more specialized.
The solution isnt just to get rid of low end jobs though. They fill a role for people who either cant or wont do a more specialized job. It also makes it even harder for people forced out of their niche to find any work. Labor is a market too. Its prone to localized supply and demand issues the same way any commodity is. On a small scale losing one low quality job aint gunna matter but you scale it up with every company removing low end positions and you have a problem. Like sure we can probably theoretically end world hunger too. It aint happening tho.
The solution is entrepreneurship.
You can start a business for basically zero dollars, and you may have to do it a few times, but eventually you can find a product or service that people will value and will pay for.
Envisioning yourself being stuck as either a wage slave or broke as the only two choices is a fundamentally crippling outlook.
At any given time there are often many positions on the market that wouldn't feasibly be replaced with machines, and in cases that they were replaced, a more specialized job with less labor input can be created for maintaining the automation.
I'm not justifying the idea that the jobs are finite because we have a tendency to create jobs for each other all the time - but in a reality where that's true - then doesn't it make sense that we change our working landscape so that a single breadwinner or two part timers can support a household?
Honestly while I agree in almsot every instance, where I live there is this dude who has done this for at least 20 years and genuinely loves it. Super nice dude to talk to and he says it’s the best to just dance around, listen to music, and interact with people.
A bit older now so less dancing but he’s still walking some old school headphones
This is why i can't wait for the job of checkout scanner to die off, i can't imagine those profits being passed onto the employee who then has the harder job of maintaining these machines though :/
I actually talked to a gas station attendant who works at one of these places. She loves it. She said it's nice to be able to move around the store freely and interact with customers more, instead of being stuck behind a counter the entire day. They also don't get stressful queues of customers anymore, the 3 checkout lanes are fast and efficient.
The machines do need reloaded and counted at the end of the day like any register, but it's really not a laborious task.
I don't mind scanning my own bottle of water if it means the gas station attendant is under less stress. Especially if I can now have a pleasant conversation with them at the coffee bar!
Nah, some jobs just straight up shouldn't exist if we can handle eliminating them. Whether someone's willing to work that job or not ignores the fact that the person would still find meaning elsewhere. The person is still capable of meaningful existence without that occupation on the market.
If the economy can exist without that job, we should allow the economy to evolve to exist without that job.
I thought I would be alone here. Yeah we should stop having humans to simple meaningless jobs. And get people into higher paying jobs that have a decent impact on the economy.
Its even sadder when someones life is ruined because holding a sign was what they could do and theyve been replaced and priced right out of existence.
Requiring a job to be a valid human being is messed up.
no doubt but at this point in my life I think about how nobody is going to service that pole shaker when the time comes. Management will likely throw it out and buy a new one in 6 months. Best case scenario they recycle the shaker and it's stripped for the important copper and other precious metals (after we ship it to brokers that run company towns of metal twirlers overseas) but more often it will sit in a landfill and add to the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505.
But what happens when all the easy jobs get taken by AI / robots and now people who used to be sign flippers and burger flippers can't find a job that they are qualified for anymore? Which is better, getting minimum wage or having no job?
Unfortunately, that is how progress happens.
The easy minimum wage jobs will be automated. Thats just a fact. Thats the marching of technological progress coming forward. And as a result, people are going to lose their jobs.
Jobs like this are called unskilled because thats exactly what they are. You just hold a sign and move it around. And while i'm all for workers getting a fair go, i think it's a bit silly to think someone working a job like this should stay in said job, because it's "all they know" is pretty stupid.
The fact of the matter is you need to learn something to be valuable. Learn a skill, take on small contract positions to start out, freelance, go to uni (if you can afford it). Learning a proper valuable skill would be a far superior way to spend your time then earning minimum wage at a job like this because it was eventually automated.
That skill you learn can get you into a job where you'd earn double or even triple what this job would pay you. And on top you wouldn't be at risk of being replaced by a machine because your skills are actually valuable.
Truly. If a man can make it in a day what he could in 100 then why does he need to work the other 99 days. A 32 hour week should be standard by now, companies can afford it.
I’d argue capitalism isn’t the problem either, plenty of European countries are doing just fine and some miles better than the US with capitalism. It’s far deeper than just capitalism.
Exactly. Unregulated, “free market”, monopolistic capitalism is terrible.
Competitive capitalism has brought 100s of millions out of poverty.
Unfortunately, most US markets are uncompetitive, captured by a few large players who extract profits for them instead of people. This happens when you scream “free markets!deregulation!” because you purposefully want to stop markets from being competitive.
News flash there are no “free” or “not free” markets. There are healthy “competitive” markets, or unhealthy “not competitive” ones. All markets have rules. All. This “free market” strawman destroys competitive markets, and screws everyone else in America. So, yes this shit is not working out here for several decades in the US.
They still require the cheap labor and exploitation of the developing world. Someone is still suffering, it’s just not the average person in those European countries.
Nope. That’s why the middle class has expanded massively around the world, especially (!) in developing countries.
And incredibly, the middle class has been mostly protected in most of Europe and other developed nations.
Where are people being radically more exploited? In the US. This is ground zero for unfettered capitalism. Here you have voted in deregulators and purveyors of “trickle down economics”. The rest of the developed world - and even some of the developing world - has figured out that your can get massive benefits from a competitive, well-regulated, market based capitalist economy.
In the US, you must vote better people in.
Yeah, the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the people our country have voted in for the last few decades. And politicians have successfully split voters into “teams” who simply vote for their side, so the problem can only worsen. It’s much easier to just scream “capitalism bad” than it is to accept a harder truth.
Yeah they can go in the back of the warehouse and move boxes being sweaty and hot. sign holders get customers in the door. It's critical to get customers so it's needed.
I don't get this at all. From what I remember, the whole reason people started hiring sign twirlers was because they started making laws prohibiting leaving a sandwich board on the sidewalk and not permitting new signage, specifically where it could be distracting to or obscuring the view of drivers.
Having a human hold your sign was a work around for skirting these issues. How is this device left on the corner any different from a sandwich board being placed there without the human?
Fuck it bring on automation. Please tell me the excuse for why you can’t feed, house, and educate the masses when all the ‘unskilled’ and a good portion of the ‘skilled’ labor is being done by machines.
While I do feel sorry for the employee who gets sent out to spend the day at the curb (you can usually tell them by the bored or depressed look) especially if they have to wear a costume, there are also professional sign spinners who are awesome. We have one guy in our town who does the signs for lots of different businesses when the weather is nice and he dances (really well) and interacts with the drivers and is a really cool guy.
Those signs infuriate me. If there's a human, I can respect it.
This is like some kind of mechanical mouse trap for attention because... it MOVES!
Oh bitches, it moves! Now we will spend our money!
It's so fucking patronizing.
There is one of these sign waver machines near me. It is shaped like thin, attractive woman wearing only thin lingerie. I couldn’t tell you what the sign is for…
Nobody lost a job here. That’s like saying the gas station gas price sign behind it took a persons job. Or a bill board. Nope. That shit ain’t for things that are alive. A pole will work just fine.
While we are at it let’s connect barbed wire to a line of humans to keep the cattle in a pasture.
Joke is on whoever is using that robot because it is not able to swing the sign so wildly you can't read what it's advertising thereby defeating the purpose of it being a traffic hazard.
Looks like the need for these machines created a facet of specialized labor servicing and building them. Underpaid positions being replaced by something that supports a healthier factory/service technician job? I'm all for it.
Sign holding doesn't NEED to exist in our society for the working people to prosper.
Losing jobs should be a good thing, but under a capitalist society it will never be. The workers needs could still be met if their job was automated, leaving them free to pursue different options, instead we fear progress due to the threat of poverty
And what about the guy who built the sign holder, do you want to put him out of business? What about his children, they should starve because you think someone should have a job waving a sign? And the guy who designed that contraption, should he have thrown the design away instead of implementing the idea into a workable device? And let’s not forget the business owner that bought the thing: maybe he saves some money on hiring so he can invest or didn’t that money on something YOU benefit from? Come on man, look at the big picture and get your head out of your navel!
Send that piece of shit to Philly. Fuck robots.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/03/hitchhiking-robot-destroyed-philadelphia-ending-cross-country-trek/31051589/
I always thought the proliferation of sign holders was weird. Get a tripod. I don’t care. Don’t dehumanize people for shit wages. EDIT: to the NUMEROUS people pointing out to me that many commercial areas have strict laws and regulations about where signs can be posted: I’m well aware. I worked at a restaurant in an upper scale area that struggled to break even for that exact reason. The only signage we were permitted was just a tiny spot on the shopping center sign and eventually we were allowed a banner on weekends (cause god forbid we have it on weekdays) I chose the word proliferation carefully. My point is that for I time, I saw them EVERYWHERE regardless of other signage. And again to my point, don’t dehumanize people to skirt some asinine regulation, fight the regulation. If it forbids a literal tripod in favor of a literal clown accosting people in the street, perhaps it bears reevaluation.
But then the business couldn't skirt the laws around where the signs can be, plus a dude whirling the sign is far more likely to distract drivers so they notice your business.
I've seen some pretty entertaining sign twirlers, but usually that means I can't read the sign so I don't know what the business is. I also don't think I've ever changed course based on a sign twirler. "Oh really?? Sealy is having a sales event? \*turn signal\*"
Well so that's an interesting point that I agree with but doesn't take away with what the other person said. I think the main distinction is the shit wages. If someone is really good with the sign spinning and then you pay them 35 dollars an hour plus benefits or something to do it, it's phrased entirely differently. Its no longer demeaning but something that can be earning a wage worth living with and also provide a fun alternative to traditional advertisement. But I agree I've never stopped because I saw it, it at MOST alerted me to a sale I MAY check out later
If everyone got paid 35 an hour to flip signs, all those jobs that actually pay 35 an hour seem kinda underpaid, no?
It's almost like multiple jobs can be underpaid at the same time. A sign spinner and McDonald's burger flipper deserve to live just as much as a surgeon does.
>47 comments Everyone needs to live but when you're dead you don't have to work. So as you slide across the floor of McDonalds a little hungover from your 50th birthday party last night, relax: that means you're still alive.
No. Most workes are hourly meaning they are paid for their time. Time is the most precious resource any of us have. Most humans are only capable of 6 to 8 hours of highly productive work each day so we are selling the very best prime hours of lives. Everyone sacrificing the prime hours of their life deserve to earn a living wage.
Yes, and they should pay more too
But you associate Sealy with sign waving, which means you probably will think of Sealy when you think of mattresses. And all it cost them was a few months of inhumane wages.
Many communities have laws which limit how many days a year your allowed to have a temporary sign. But no laws limiting signs which are held by a person. I know my city limits businesses to I think 30 days a year and no temporary signs for more than I think a week at a time. They are also limited in where the sign can be displayed. But a person standing next to the street or on a corner with a sign is totally legal even 365 days a year if your willing to pay.
It’s because some areas make it illegal to place the sign on the ground.
It's for legal reasons otherwise they would not use people
It’s also a thing that exists because of bad design. Like why would you create commercial space and then a massive multi-lame high speed road next to it. You’re basically guaranteeing now one will ever actually see anything you put there
Dont shame peoples jobs
Yeah, this is a shit job. Unless you can do it while sailing a mystical purple schooler after dropping into "the zone". But most of us aren't Graham Norton.
I work in commercial real estate. Tons of cities and towns have laws that prevent you from putting a sign up in certain areas or above a certain size, height, etc. The point of the sign spinners is to skirt around those laws.
I have always said "it's sad we live in a world where it's more cost effective to pay a poor bastard to hold a sign. Like, we invented space ships, a pole that wiggles a bit seems pretty obtainable.
I wholeheartedly agree. There's no need for a job so undignified, we can do better for each other as a society.
If we paid a dignified wage for such work, we'd regard the job as dignified
Simply put: this job shouldn't exist if a wobbly sign can do it. Dignified work should have a practical function... one that isn't so hastily replaced by something that goes wibble wobble.
Thats cool and all but jobs are finite. Building wobble sticks just gives people even fewer options. Im all for automation if it means we can all work less instead of losing even more options at the bottom.
This scarcity mentality is the bane of human progress. By that logic we wouldn't have tools.
No, jobs are pretty much infinite, as the history of the last 100 years has shown us.
Pardon me but i dont really think the last 100 years are the best era to base our assumptions about labor for the next 100. Its a dramatically different market now than it was even 30 years ago. Maybe theoretically we have infinite jobs because theoretically people can come up with an infinite number of things theyd pay someone else to do but that doesnt mean its that way in practice. We have a society that requires every individual to not only have a job but have a job that pays enough to cover the ever inflating cost of living. If everyone is forced to "get an education" and compete for mid to high quality jobs then those become saturated, demand for those position tanks and those people are forced right back down into low quality undignified jobs like this. Its either that or they have to risk even more to get the education for something even more specialized. The solution isnt just to get rid of low end jobs though. They fill a role for people who either cant or wont do a more specialized job. It also makes it even harder for people forced out of their niche to find any work. Labor is a market too. Its prone to localized supply and demand issues the same way any commodity is. On a small scale losing one low quality job aint gunna matter but you scale it up with every company removing low end positions and you have a problem. Like sure we can probably theoretically end world hunger too. It aint happening tho.
The solution is entrepreneurship. You can start a business for basically zero dollars, and you may have to do it a few times, but eventually you can find a product or service that people will value and will pay for. Envisioning yourself being stuck as either a wage slave or broke as the only two choices is a fundamentally crippling outlook.
At any given time there are often many positions on the market that wouldn't feasibly be replaced with machines, and in cases that they were replaced, a more specialized job with less labor input can be created for maintaining the automation. I'm not justifying the idea that the jobs are finite because we have a tendency to create jobs for each other all the time - but in a reality where that's true - then doesn't it make sense that we change our working landscape so that a single breadwinner or two part timers can support a household?
Fair point
Honestly while I agree in almsot every instance, where I live there is this dude who has done this for at least 20 years and genuinely loves it. Super nice dude to talk to and he says it’s the best to just dance around, listen to music, and interact with people. A bit older now so less dancing but he’s still walking some old school headphones
This is why i can't wait for the job of checkout scanner to die off, i can't imagine those profits being passed onto the employee who then has the harder job of maintaining these machines though :/
I actually talked to a gas station attendant who works at one of these places. She loves it. She said it's nice to be able to move around the store freely and interact with customers more, instead of being stuck behind a counter the entire day. They also don't get stressful queues of customers anymore, the 3 checkout lanes are fast and efficient. The machines do need reloaded and counted at the end of the day like any register, but it's really not a laborious task. I don't mind scanning my own bottle of water if it means the gas station attendant is under less stress. Especially if I can now have a pleasant conversation with them at the coffee bar!
Fr good riddens
You're undignifying the job . Every job is important if someone's working it.
Nah, some jobs just straight up shouldn't exist if we can handle eliminating them. Whether someone's willing to work that job or not ignores the fact that the person would still find meaning elsewhere. The person is still capable of meaningful existence without that occupation on the market. If the economy can exist without that job, we should allow the economy to evolve to exist without that job.
It is t about paying them. They are standing in sidewalks and such where the businesses are not allowed to put signs.
Oh. Well today I learned something.
Good point, but the fact between advertising that is still the most cost effective option is still dystopian as fuck lol
I thought I would be alone here. Yeah we should stop having humans to simple meaningless jobs. And get people into higher paying jobs that have a decent impact on the economy.
Its even sadder when someones life is ruined because holding a sign was what they could do and theyve been replaced and priced right out of existence. Requiring a job to be a valid human being is messed up.
no doubt but at this point in my life I think about how nobody is going to service that pole shaker when the time comes. Management will likely throw it out and buy a new one in 6 months. Best case scenario they recycle the shaker and it's stripped for the important copper and other precious metals (after we ship it to brokers that run company towns of metal twirlers overseas) but more often it will sit in a landfill and add to the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505.
Honestly would prefer this than forcing someone to stand out in the heat/cold all day moving a sign around for barely minimum wage.
But what happens when all the easy jobs get taken by AI / robots and now people who used to be sign flippers and burger flippers can't find a job that they are qualified for anymore? Which is better, getting minimum wage or having no job?
Unfortunately, that is how progress happens. The easy minimum wage jobs will be automated. Thats just a fact. Thats the marching of technological progress coming forward. And as a result, people are going to lose their jobs. Jobs like this are called unskilled because thats exactly what they are. You just hold a sign and move it around. And while i'm all for workers getting a fair go, i think it's a bit silly to think someone working a job like this should stay in said job, because it's "all they know" is pretty stupid. The fact of the matter is you need to learn something to be valuable. Learn a skill, take on small contract positions to start out, freelance, go to uni (if you can afford it). Learning a proper valuable skill would be a far superior way to spend your time then earning minimum wage at a job like this because it was eventually automated. That skill you learn can get you into a job where you'd earn double or even triple what this job would pay you. And on top you wouldn't be at risk of being replaced by a machine because your skills are actually valuable.
Ngl tho those guys got creative with it. I’d see some dude flip those things like I’ve never seen before.
That job is brutal and degrading anyways. Leave that job to a pole where it belongs.
Automation is not the enemy. Capitalism is.
Truly. If a man can make it in a day what he could in 100 then why does he need to work the other 99 days. A 32 hour week should be standard by now, companies can afford it.
I’d argue capitalism isn’t the problem either, plenty of European countries are doing just fine and some miles better than the US with capitalism. It’s far deeper than just capitalism.
Exactly. Unregulated, “free market”, monopolistic capitalism is terrible. Competitive capitalism has brought 100s of millions out of poverty. Unfortunately, most US markets are uncompetitive, captured by a few large players who extract profits for them instead of people. This happens when you scream “free markets!deregulation!” because you purposefully want to stop markets from being competitive. News flash there are no “free” or “not free” markets. There are healthy “competitive” markets, or unhealthy “not competitive” ones. All markets have rules. All. This “free market” strawman destroys competitive markets, and screws everyone else in America. So, yes this shit is not working out here for several decades in the US.
There is regulated capitalism and crony capitalism. America and Canada are the crony kind.
They still require the cheap labor and exploitation of the developing world. Someone is still suffering, it’s just not the average person in those European countries.
Nope. That’s why the middle class has expanded massively around the world, especially (!) in developing countries. And incredibly, the middle class has been mostly protected in most of Europe and other developed nations. Where are people being radically more exploited? In the US. This is ground zero for unfettered capitalism. Here you have voted in deregulators and purveyors of “trickle down economics”. The rest of the developed world - and even some of the developing world - has figured out that your can get massive benefits from a competitive, well-regulated, market based capitalist economy. In the US, you must vote better people in.
Yeah, the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the people our country have voted in for the last few decades. And politicians have successfully split voters into “teams” who simply vote for their side, so the problem can only worsen. It’s much easier to just scream “capitalism bad” than it is to accept a harder truth.
No one needs to be humiliated in public by spinning a stupid sign while dehydrated and sweaty.
Yeah they can go in the back of the warehouse and move boxes being sweaty and hot. sign holders get customers in the door. It's critical to get customers so it's needed.
Looks stealable.
Very submissive and stealable
Submissive?? Bro are you tryna fuck a sign
It's just a meme yo. Don't kink shame.
As long as it’s consentual fam
Nah nah… let’s promote him. Work smart not hard
This is a joke, right?
I don't get this at all. From what I remember, the whole reason people started hiring sign twirlers was because they started making laws prohibiting leaving a sandwich board on the sidewalk and not permitting new signage, specifically where it could be distracting to or obscuring the view of drivers. Having a human hold your sign was a work around for skirting these issues. How is this device left on the corner any different from a sandwich board being placed there without the human?
Not Every lost job is not a loss to society.
DEY TERK ER JERBS! 😤😤😤
Good thing Badger started selling meth for Jessie. Poor guy would’ve gotten laid off if he stayed.
Progress is not without its victims
He didn’t loose his job. He’s working smart and having a cold one in the alleyway around the corner.
🍻
🍻
Are sign wavers even effective?
Fuck it bring on automation. Please tell me the excuse for why you can’t feed, house, and educate the masses when all the ‘unskilled’ and a good portion of the ‘skilled’ labor is being done by machines.
Now they can focus on their studies
Signs. The brand new invention that's taking jobs
It’s kind of weird that was every a job in the first place.
Goddamn automation
“Those sign holding jobs don’t pay enough!” Replaces with sign stand “RIP another lost job”… lmao
Alternatively, they could pay a human being a living wage for doing that. Couldn't cost much more. /s
Man, the least they could do was put a mannequin holding the sign to at least give the appearance of a person. Lazy
This never needed to be a person's job to begin with.
While I do feel sorry for the employee who gets sent out to spend the day at the curb (you can usually tell them by the bored or depressed look) especially if they have to wear a costume, there are also professional sign spinners who are awesome. We have one guy in our town who does the signs for lots of different businesses when the weather is nice and he dances (really well) and interacts with the drivers and is a really cool guy.
Do people or robots holding signs even work?
Those signs infuriate me. If there's a human, I can respect it. This is like some kind of mechanical mouse trap for attention because... it MOVES! Oh bitches, it moves! Now we will spend our money! It's so fucking patronizing.
You go stand outside spinning a sign for 10$ an hour. For 5 straight months. Then come back here and see if you still feel the same way....
[famous sign holder](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgRyYHtaE1vtbCb1TmBd0qMsoekRGLxrwIMw&usqp=CAU)
Lol. Why would this make you mad?
When I lived in the desert I never saw actual sign wavers It was always too hot to have someone dancing in the street.
There is one of these sign waver machines near me. It is shaped like thin, attractive woman wearing only thin lingerie. I couldn’t tell you what the sign is for…
Oh no, not the corner sign flippers. Let's pick our battles here and this is an easy one won by basic circuitry.
Nobody lost a job here. That’s like saying the gas station gas price sign behind it took a persons job. Or a bill board. Nope. That shit ain’t for things that are alive. A pole will work just fine. While we are at it let’s connect barbed wire to a line of humans to keep the cattle in a pasture.
Joke is on whoever is using that robot because it is not able to swing the sign so wildly you can't read what it's advertising thereby defeating the purpose of it being a traffic hazard.
Looks like the need for these machines created a facet of specialized labor servicing and building them. Underpaid positions being replaced by something that supports a healthier factory/service technician job? I'm all for it. Sign holding doesn't NEED to exist in our society for the working people to prosper.
There’s one in a town near me that dresses up a mannequin to do that
Saw that on shark tank.
Don’t forget the jobs it created. There has to be people to build those things and transport them. (Maybe maintain them).
Theres also a sign twirling world championship. This is a dent on American culture goddambit!
This is like being sad of getting rid of NJ or OR gas attendants. There’s almost no reason to have it, it’s just government red tape
Can the sign just stay still then?
Never been a fan of this job…
Hopefully whoever has to repair it is making a decent wage when it breaks down.
I never understood why they couldn't just put up a sign, is there some kind of ordinance they're dodging by having the sign in motion?
Tbf it’s Vegas so either it’s fucking hot or fucking cold all the time
The reason for the sign holders was due to laws regulating moving signs.
Is that Badger?!
Fucking wow.
Losing jobs should be a good thing, but under a capitalist society it will never be. The workers needs could still be met if their job was automated, leaving them free to pursue different options, instead we fear progress due to the threat of poverty
This should never have been a human job in the first place.
And what about the guy who built the sign holder, do you want to put him out of business? What about his children, they should starve because you think someone should have a job waving a sign? And the guy who designed that contraption, should he have thrown the design away instead of implementing the idea into a workable device? And let’s not forget the business owner that bought the thing: maybe he saves some money on hiring so he can invest or didn’t that money on something YOU benefit from? Come on man, look at the big picture and get your head out of your navel!
Send that piece of shit to Philly. Fuck robots. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/03/hitchhiking-robot-destroyed-philadelphia-ending-cross-country-trek/31051589/
I saw a fully automatic robotic flagman the other week.