Americans spend roughly 37 billion hours each year waiting in line. Same Ole Line Dudes Founder & CEO Robert Samuel discusses how time is money and being in the business of throwing his “wait” around to take your place in line. 
 
 Everyone is familiar with waiting in line. According to a recent study in The New York Times, Americans spend roughly 37 billion hours each year waiting for all sorts of things. 
 
 Yet for some people, patience isn't necessarily a virtue and time is money. Therefore, there are better ways to get that shiny new Apple gadget than camping out for days in front of their store, or squatting on the sidewalk to purchase a pair of limited edition Nike Air Jordans. 
 
 Enter the professional who, for a fee, will save you precious time. 
 
 
 
 "The longest I've ever been on a line was 38 hours for an iPhone," says Robert Samuel, a professional line waiter, in an interview with CNBC. 
 
 
 
 Samuel is the CEO and founder of SOLD, an acronym for Same Old Line Dudes. After he was laid off from his job in 2012, Samuels launched SOLD as a line waiting service. Since then, the business has since grown into an enterprising start-up that views time as a precious commodity. And people are clearly willing to pay to save it. 
 
 
 
 While Samuel describes SOLD's clients as average everyday people, he says his customer are more time strapped than cash poor, and vary widely from middle class to super-wealthy. 
 
 
 
 "Moms hire me because they can't wait in lines in the mornings. They have to take the kids off to school," says Samuels. "I get hired by people who want stuff but their schedules are just tight." 
 
 
 
 Read MoreExcited about Apple? The line seems to have started in Sydney ||||| So what compels Mr. Samuel to spend so much time in line? Well, to be exact, $25 for the first hour and $10 for each additional half-hour. 
 
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 “I take PayPal, Chase QuickPay and Venmo,” he said. 
 
 If additional people have to be hired for multiple orders, then the price can balloon, as it did in June when Mr. Samuel and his posse of eight waited in line to buy 18 Cronuts for a group of wealthy Middle Easterners staying at the Mandarin Oriental in Columbus Circle. (There’s a limit of two per person.) 
 
 Mr. Samuel, you see, is a professional line-sitter, a job that began two years ago when he lost his job selling smartphones at an AT&T store on East 86th Street. 
 
 “I was fired for being late,” he said. “A few minutes here, a few minutes there.” 
 
 After several months of being unemployed and depressed, Mr. Samuel put an ad on Craigslist offering to stand in line for anyone who wanted a soon-to-be-released iPhone 5. An offer came in, and he made it to the Apple store in the meatpacking district early enough to be third in line, which got him an interview with The Daily News. 
 
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 Similar postings on Craigslist followed, and he was hired to stand in line for designer sample sales and concert tickets. 
 
 It hasn’t been all roses. 
 
 The line-sitters for new iPhones are no longer die-hard Apple fans, but Chinese men and women who sell them to middlemen who export them to China for a tidy profit. “They have this whole operation or scheme, and they look at us like, ‘How dare they?’ ” he said. “We definitely feel the tension.” 
 
 And don’t get Mr. Samuel started on what it’s like to wait for “Saturday Night Live” tickets. 
 
 “I really don’t want to do that,” he said. “People are on line for days at a time. We go from 11 at night till 6 in the morning, and you don’t get in. With a big show like Justin Bieber, I would probably just tell you no. Tina Fey? Not happening.” 
 
 Mr. Samuel’s business is cyclical, so he continues to work full time as a security guard for a financial services company. Though Craigslist and Yelp haven’t had an avalanche of professional line-sitters yet, there is nevertheless competition coming from share economy start-ups like TaskRabbit and Agent Anything, where the young and underemployed can be purchased to do any variety of small tasks. 
 
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 Mr. Samuel’s own mother remains skeptical about her son’s latest endeavor, regardless of the attendant publicity. 
 
 “She thinks I should go back to school,” said Mr. Samuel, who dropped out of Pace University in 1996 with about a year and a half left before getting his undergraduate degree. (He refers to it as his “reverse sabbatical.”) 
 
 Certainly, the line in Rockefeller Center the other Friday was enough to question whether being a line-sitter is a smart career move. Just before 8 a.m., a young woman started passing out wristbands, the morning’s equivalent of a golden ticket, but stopped five people short of Mr. Samuel and his group. 
 
 “Sorry, we’re out” she said, indicating that the limited-edition game was very limited indeed. 
 
 Mr. Samuel was unfazed. “They hired us for four hours, and we got here at 4,” he said, packing up his belongings to hop on the subway back to his home in Chelsea. 
 
 Still, he decided that he would give a partial refund to his customers. It was good P.R. 
 
 “It’s not fair to take the full amount of waiting when we didn’t get the product,” he said. “One of the customers is a loyal customer. He’s used me before and he gave me a good rating on Yelp.” ||||| Robert Samuel, founder of Same Ole Line Dudes, makes up to $1,000 a week to stand in line. He waits in line for Broadway shows, sample sales, tech releases and even brunch waitlists. 
 
 Samuel recently spent 48 hours outside the Apple store in the Meatpacking District waiting for the iPhone 6s. He was the first in line, slept in a fold-up cot for two nights, had pizza delivered to his spot and snagged $1000 for the gig. 
 
 Samuel's business joins dozens of "Ubers" like Lugg: Uber for Movers, Doughbies On-Demand: Uber for chocolate chip cookies, Minibar: Uber for alcohol and Breather: Uber for peace and quiet — all of which essentially allow customers to buy their way to the front. ||||| There are frequent fliers, there are high fliers, and then there is Ryan Bingham. He's cheerfully clocked only he knows how many miles over the last year, 322 days flying airline hub to spoke for work. That makes 322 nights comparing the minibars (and maxibabes) at Marriotts and Hiltons. Which leaves him a mere "43 miserable days" in home sweet Omaha. 
 
 Ryan (George Clooney) is The Terminator, euphemistically a Career Transition Counselor, the suave bully you call when cowed by the prospect of eliminating excess employees. See Ryan train his buckshot eyes on the target about to be culled. Hear him deliver soothing platitudes about job loss as an opportunity for spiritual growth. Feel his palpable relief as he settles in his first-class seat on the way to the next gig. 
 
 For Ryan, happiness is a flotation device beneath the rump. The people he terminates have no such cushion. 
 
 And for him, a connection isn't interpersonal, it's the transfer you make at Terminal B. 
 
 This he believes - until he meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), his female counterpart, and Natalie (Anna Kendrick), his colleague, women who will rock his world, personally and professionally. They are him, only with gal parts. He's both turned on and scared by these mirror images, the rootless careerist without home ties, and the efficiency expert trying to achieve even greater economies of scale. 
 
 Up in the Air, Jason Reitman's nimble adaptation of the 2001 novel by Walter Kirn, is perfectly tailored to Clooney's melancholy twinkle and purring motormouth. I don't know if it's the best movie of the year, but it's the most utterly enjoyable. 
 
 While it may be only Reitman's third feature (after Thank You for Smoking and Juno) the 32-year-old son of producer/director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Stripes) has a firmer command of star and story than many veterans twice his age and experience. 
 
 Rather than scripting the reactions of the newly downsized, Reitman filmed the responses of real-life workers recently laid off. Their stinging earfuls are a most eloquent way of showing the human turbulence of corporate cost-cutting. 
 
 A satirical account of an economy where the only growth industry is in layoffs, Up in the Air is also a ruefully funny portrait of a culture preoccupied with elite memberships, bonus points, and upgrades - empty status symbols in uneasy times. The scene where Ryan and Alex show each other what's inside their wallets may be one of the funniest pickup sequences ever, but it also speaks to the characters' status anxiety. 
 
 Farmiga (The Departed) is, as always, sublime, a human version of the hot-and-cold patch you get to treat a bruised muscle. In this movie, the muscle is Ryan's heart. 
 
 Did I mention how great Clooney is? In recent years, he's become the go-to guy for movies about recovering cynics. But never before has he conveyed the extent to which his character's lightness of spirit was a means of allaying fears of the dark. 
 
 Ryan may not be admirable, but Clooney makes him relatable. It's his deepest and nakedest performance, one that plays into his public persona as the guy who flies solo and deserves all the award recognition it will get. 
 
 His Ryan speaks with velvet-voiced authority. Listen closely and you hear the fraying nerves. What might happen if the man who draws a paycheck from downsizing could himself be downsized? What might happen if inside this lone ranger was a lonely guy hankering to couple up? What might happen if the man flying high above layoffs could be grounded? 
 
 Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey 
 
 at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. 
 
 Read her blog, "Flickgrrl," 
 
 at http://www.philly.com/ 
 
 philly/blogs/flickgrrl/
– Robert Samuel is a professional time-killer. As the founder and CEO of Same Ole Line Dudes (or SOLD) in New York, he'll keep your place in line to ensure you get your hands on "iPhones, the latest Air Jordans, or the hottest Broadway tix in town." SOLD has even helped New Yorkers with brunch waitlists, sample sales, and passports. And because he's paid for his time—$25 for the first hour, and $10 for every half-hour thereafter—long lines are likely a lot more welcome to him than they are to the rest of us. In fact, Samuel recently made nearly $1,000 when he spent 48 hours at the very head of the line for the iPhone 6, reports Salon, which calls the business part of the "Uber-ization of everything." Since starting SOLD after getting laid off in 2012, Samuel now has 15 employees. He says he makes up to $1,000 a week, though the New York Times notes that because his business is "cyclical," he currently also has a full-time job as a security guard. The line-waiting doesn't always sound pleasant. SOLD employee Adonis Porch tells Salon he's had to wait in hot weather, freezing weather, rain, sleet, and snow. Samuel says that while his customers can be superwealthy, most are just "everyday" people for whom time is a real commodity, reports CNBC. "Moms hire me because they can't wait in lines in the mornings. They have to take the kids off to school." Though in that wealthy vein, the Times recounts the time a group from the Middle East had nine SOLD workers wait in line for Cronuts. Whatever he's doing, his advice: "The rule is always respect the order of things. First come first served." (This line stretched more than a mile last November.)