By: Rana Assem

We, Egyptians, can’t deny that we are lazy people “sha3b kaslan be tab3o”. If we can get away with it, we will do the bare minimum and most certainly abuse it more than one can imagine! But there are certain jobs we can’t live without even though we make fun of! Everyday, we meet people who we can’t conceive how their roles could be titled as ‘jobs’! 

Here is a list of ‘only Egyptian jobs’ that you might think are useless, but your life seems to revolve around them for some odd reason.

1. El-Sayes

We all have that love-hate relationship with El-Sayes. They are either unnecessary and are just standing there waving their hands or ‘Totally’ unnecessary, making it harder for you to get out of your parking spot. We love it though when we get out of the parking lot without him noticing us as if we just made it through a bank robbery.

2. The Guy at the Mobile/Phone Network Store!

How many times have you been to a Vodafone or Orange shop and were greeted by the guy who just stands by the door to ask you what you came to do so he can click the machine that gives you your customer number? It’s literally just one TOUCH, why do we need a whole job for that?

3. El-Taba3

Let’s take a moment and imagine a microbus without this guy who’s about to fall out of the vehicle screaming: “3ataba, 3ataba 3atabaaa..”. Our streets would have been at least 10 times less noisy.

4. The Guy at the Supermarket Who Carries the Bags to Your Car

Believe it or not this guy does not exist in any other place in the world. Obviously there’s a reason for that. It might be because it’s sometimes more of a fight between you and him over who’s gonna take the bags.

5. El Coiffeur’s Assistant

If there was an award for the most useless job around the world it would definitely be given to the guy standing next to your hairdresser handing him the hair straightener and taking it back after styling each hair strand.

6. The Ticket Machine Guy

You cannot get out of any parking without noticing this guy who just presses the machine button for you. If you didn’t notice him at the entrance, don’t worry, you will find the exact same guy standing by the exit taking the ticket from you to put it in the machine. It has become something too normal for us that we never comment about how unneeded this guy is.

HUH- now you will notice them, probably you never thought of some, considering how we become used to their existence. Specially the hairdresser’s assistant. My co-worker just shouted out: ‘how would my hairdresser style my hair without someone handing him a “bensa” every two minutes’- Exactly!!