# Why pay someone to hold a sign? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 30, 2002, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211 "2002-09-30T06:44:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ElwoodCuse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/edb3f5/32.png) [@ElwoodCuse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElwoodCuse)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2002, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211/1 "2002-09-30T06:44:47Z")
So the Ames here (and everywhere) are going out of business. They have signs all over the place that say “Going out of business-everything must go-save up 50%!”. But what baffles me is I have seen a couple of people standing on street corners (near the actual Ames stores) holding these signs on sticks. Why would a company pay someone to hold these signs up? They also have many of them simply staked into the ground all over the place like election signs. And these people aren’t doing anything, they are just standing there reading a book or listening to the radio while they hold a post with this sign on it (it must be fantastically boring). ---
**Author:** ![Flymaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c4cdca/32.png) [@Flymaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flymaster)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2002, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211/2 "2002-09-30T06:52:20Z")
They’re doing the same thing at every Ames around here, too, and my only guess has been some kind of zoning law. ---
**Author:** ![Violet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ebca7d/32.png) [@Violet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Violet)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2002, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211/3 "2002-09-30T06:55:37Z")
I saw a man in Edinburgh (Scotland) holding a sign in front of his business advertising a “divorce sale.” I suppose if I really needed a job and could not immediately find one, I’d take the boring job of sign holding. ---
**Author:** ![King\_Friday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/43a26b/32.png) [@King\_Friday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/King_Friday)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2002, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211/4 "2002-09-30T07:00:43Z")
Maybe some of the cashiers took a demotion rather then a layoff. If they were smart, they should sit in a wheel chair, maybe make a few bucks. ---
**Author:** ![TeaElle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8491ac/32.png) [@TeaElle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TeaElle)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2002, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211/5 "2002-09-30T07:11:05Z")
The reasons are probably threefold: 1.) Local law prohibits the installation of a sign, even temporarily, to advertise a commercial entity, but a person holding a sign isn’t an installation, and if they stay on the sidewalks, they’re simply exercising their first amendment rights. 2.) Because the company is in chapter 11, there isn’t enough money to pay for billboards, nor is there enough time, as billboard purchases are typically for a 30 day period and must be negotiated several months in advance. 3.) Day laborers can be paid minimum wage or slightly more to perform this sign-holding duty. This amount is low enough to come out of discretionary budgets at the store or regional level, even for a store going out of business. It gives someone a job for a day. It is highly unlikely that store employees would be out there holding signs; not only would it be outside of the scope of their job description, it’s unlikely that they’d agree to it. It’s not as if they’re not already losing their jobs, so refusal isn’t going to cost them much. Easier to avoid the issue altogether. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2002, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211/6 "2002-09-30T07:12:05Z")
The people are holding signs near busy high-traffic areas where it is illegal to put a sign in the ground. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2002, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211/7 "2002-09-30T11:10:17Z")
It’s also an attention getter. We’re conditioned to tune out signs planted by the side of the road, but if you see a person carrying a sign, it usually causes a double-take… A better question might be: Why pay some ivory tower Madison Avenue advertising firm a sum in excess of many countries’ GDP to spew vapid truisms to a semi-literate public? Of course, I know, “to make five times some countries’ GDPs in profits” :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2002, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211/8 "2002-09-30T12:07:52Z")
It can’t be the cost of printing up signs. When K-mart closed a bunch of their stores, the signs being held by people were the exact same signs that were stuck into the ground on stakes. I’d guess that a person waving a sign gets more attention than a sign sitting there motionless. I think that **tlw** might be onto something with the day laborers; the guys waving the K-mart signs looked like laid-off autoworkers to me. ---
**Author:** ![dantheman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dantheman/32/9421_2.png) [@dantheman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dantheman)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2002, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-pay-someone-to-hold-a-sign/130211/9 "2002-09-30T13:00:37Z")
I was gonna mention what **Diceman** did; when K-mart closed around here, there were zillions of signs stuck in the ground near the store, and there were also people waving the same dadblasted signs in the same general area. Just a better attention getting, I s’pose.