In 2007, more than a dozen queue-for-you businesses operated around the parking area of the Home Affairs office in Randburg, South Africa. IOL reported that Fernando Chooki's company employed fourteen people and helped clients who lacked time for long queues involving passports, identity documents and other paperwork. The business did not replace acts requiring the applicant's identity. It absorbed the waiting, held a place and followed the progress of documents.
First-come order may remain unchanged while the cost of time is distributed unevenly. A worker who cannot take a day off, or a person unable to leave family responsibilities, buys back those hours. The professional queuer sells the same hours as labour. When the opening times of public offices do not fit the schedules of the people who need them, an occupation can emerge outside the queue itself.