A man buys fake eyelashes for one of his clients (via GlobalPost)
Need someone to kill a bug or hang with Gramps? In South Korea, you could hire a Substitute Man, who’ll do just about any odd job you can think of.
According to stories from PRI’s The World and GlobalPost, a growing trend in the service industry is for companies to hire an army of men and women to take on tasks big and small. For a fee that ranges from a few bucks to hundreds, customers can have one of these “substitute men” (also called “instead men” or “anymen”) do anything they please, from picking up dinner to posing as a family member.
A quote from Yoon Ju Yeol, president of the company Anyman:
“We had a call once from a pregnant girl who was fighting with her boyfriend because he didn’t want to marry her … So she hired one of our agents to pose as her mother and pressure the boyfriend to propose. He says now they are happily married.”
No, these substitute men won’t do sexual favors or anything illegal. Hmmm, I wonder if this service will make its way to the U.S. My garage does need cleaning …
