⏰ Waiting in line is a job now

Plus: Missing middle management, cool space logos, and more.

Share The Hustle: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Check your referral progress & prizes here 👋  Good morning, and don't forget to replace the toilet paper. If you regularly find yourself in a compromising position, you might be the target customer for Charmin's Forever Roll. The brand's largest TP roll — which comes in a $35 two-pack that includes a stainless steel holder — has 1.7k sheets and promises to last for a month. The brand says that when fully unspooled, the roll would be as tall as the Washington Monument. 🎧  On the pod: How some people are making dough by waiting in very long lines. STARTING UP A startup making friends through fitness ❌  The problem: Many social opportunities still revolve around nightlife and drinking. And while fitness apps can track miles and steps, they struggle to help build connections IRL. 💡  The pitch: Sweatpals wants to help users bulk up their social circles with in-person wellness events — think: yoga, hikes, cold plunges, or sauna sessions — while giving hosts tools to sell tickets, run memberships, and manage communities. 🚀  The outlook: Founded in 2022, the startup now has 1m+ monthly users, 4.5k hosts, and $12m in seed funding. Hosts earn ~$70k on average a year, with the top 1% pulling in $2m. Talk about gains.   NEWS FLASH Expensive, but cool: Mirror founder Brynn Putnam's latest venture is Board, a gaming console that players gather around like a board game, but it has a 24-inch screen that responds to touch, gestures, and physical objects. It retails for $500 (for a limited time) and comes with 12 games. Even more expensive: Robotics company 1X's Neo is available for pre-order. The humanoid bot — which costs $20k for early access or a ~$500/month subscription — can help with chores, but users must agree to let human teleoperators see inside their homes through the bot's camera to gather more training data. Ridepanda, a company that supplies bikes, e-bikes, and scooters to employers as a worker benefit, has raised $12.6m to expand its team and platform. "Ctrl Alt Deleaf" is what the public named a train operated by Network Rail, which owns and maintains most of Great Britain's railway infrastructure. It and similar trains will blast leaf mulch off 20k miles of track to prevent issues caused by ~500B leaves each year. FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM Yelp's AI hostess is clocking in  If you're looking to snag a dinner reservation this weekend, you might find yourself chatting with a new employee.  Yelp launched Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist to support restaurants and small businesses.  The AI tools can answer calls, handle reservations, manage waitlists, and answer simple questions to help stretched-thin businesses.  Plus, it means humans spend less time rattling off the gluten-free options. 👉  Read more on Mindstream   THE BIG IDEA Time is literally money when you're a professional line stander If you're wealthy enough, it turns out you don't even have to wait in line. And we're not talking about line-cutting services, but actually paying someone else to stand in line for you.  At a recent sample sale at NYC's The Row, some line-standers were paid up to $800 to camp out overnight to secure a spot for shoppers hoping to score deep discounts on luxury goods, per The Wall Street Journal.  Robert Samuel, founder of Same Ole Line Dudes, told the WSJ that sample sales for high-end fashion brands, which typically take place in autumn, is the company's "Super Bowl," requiring him to double his 35-person staff. At The Row's sale, 61 of his employees made up the first 80 spots in the queue. Those clients paid $25/hour. How it works Well, it's pretty simple. Clients fork over the cash and line-standers wait. They can be found working for line-standing companies or on gig platforms like Taskrabbit.  If allowed, they bring tarps, tents, gaming consoles, portable TVs, and more to stay warm and keep busy, and many recognize each other from various gigs around town.  Meanwhile, clients apparently see it as money well spent, seeing as how paying a few hundred dollars for a prime spot in line can net them a hard-to-secure reservation or ticket, or thousands in savings on deeply discounted luxury items. Line standing isn't new… … but it hasn't always been for luxury items and exclusive sneaker drops.  "Stacz kolejkowy" (line stander) became a profession in Communist-era Poland due to shortages of consumer goods. There is even a Polish board game about waiting in lines.  In the US, the practice has long been common in politics, with line standers attempting to secure seats for lobbyists and others who want to attend hearings or debates.  One DC-area company, Washington Express, claims 40+ years of experience and charges $60 per hour at a three-hour minimum. Skip the Line founder Jennifer Goff charges $30-$40 per hour and told Business Insider that SCOTUS hearings are her best-paying gigs, with clients sometimes booking teams, who work in shifts, 24 to 36 hours in advance. Now, however, with everything from reservations and tickets to sample sales and pop-ups requiring hours of waiting, it is a gig on the rise. Taskrabbit bookings for line-standers rose 18% from the end of 2023 to the end of 2024, per BI, with average rates at $27/hour.  And while it may sound like easy money, that's not always the case. One line-stander, who told BI that she charges $20/hour, got in line for a limited-engagement Broadway musical at 6am. It was in NYC and so cold, she couldn't feel her face or hands despite wearing two coats, two hats, and two pairs of gloves. 🔗 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Scare tactics: Salem, Massachusetts, may be one of the world's top Halloween destinations, but it still needs to market itself. We talked to the person in charge of doing just that. NEWSWORTHY NUMBER Share of US workers who say they depend on managers to explain what company updates actually mean for them, according to a survey from Firstup, per Fast Company.    Workers also identified managers as their go-to for recognition, help with workplace challenges, and development, while upper management had less of an impact — 40% said they couldn't get guidance from them. Yet increasingly, layoffs across the tech sector have eliminated management positions, putting fewer people in between senior leaders and junior workers. In cases where layoffs had occurred, 38% of respondents said their managers had become harder to reach, 30% reported less support amid changes, and 30% expected less access to mentorship or development options. While layoffs may save companies money, a survey like this indicates leaner may not actually result in a happier, more productive workforce.   AROUND THE WEB 📅  On this day: In 1864, four prospectors founded Helena, Montana, after finding gold in what they named Last Chance Gulch. 🚀  That's cool: An archive of space logos, both real and fictional. 🗞️  Newsletter:  The AI Report sends AI insights, tools, and strategies daily.  📚  Useful: The Atlantic's 65 essential children's books. 🐶  Aww: Cuter than raking. QUOTE OF NOTE Yikes: Western automotive and clean energy execs, like Ford CEO Jim Farley, recently went to China to scope out the competition and reportedly came back absolutely terrified by what they saw — a fully automated industry of robot laborers working round the clock to produce superior vehicles at a fraction of the cost.    Considering what Farley told The Verge last month, the US ban on Chinese EVs is seemingly the only thing keeping American manufacturers afloat.   As they say, if you can't beat 'em… make sure as hell they can't enter your market.   SHOWER THOUGHT A very careful koala could possibly hatch a duckling in her pouch. SOURCE Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Sara Friedman, and Singdhi Sokpo. Editing by: Ben "Good things come to those who wait in lines" Berkley.   Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.   Working on something big? We've got a whole library of business-building resources for you. 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