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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

Amazing to see these statistics when, to a foreigner, South African businesses already seem to intentionally overemploy (I would assume as a way of maintaining social stability). It is not unusual for there to be twice or even three times as many people working in a shop than in Europe.

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It reminds me of a small coworking space I used in Sao Paulo, with three receptionists, a few "managers", lots of cleaning staff, someone doing just coffee, security, etc. They could do all of that with two employees total. In front of the building, there was a petrol station with one employee per pump. The pandemic was actually a relief for lots of companies that were able to fire expendable staff more easily.

Yeah, in South Africa nobody puts their own gas in their car. There are multiple people at each filling station whose job that is. You also don’t pack your groceries at a supermarket either. You also have a maid and a gardener, it’s so dirt cheap unless you’re really poor there is no reason why you wouldn’t. There are car guards all over, there’s no need to even push your own trolley or pack the stuff in your car, they’ll do it for a small tip. Basically if you earn an average amount money you can enjoy a seriously comfortable life.

The surplus of unskilled workers means that labor is very cheap. Businesses over employ (cleaning staff, security etc), and even homes over employ in terms of domestic staff (maids and garderners), but there’s still a big surplus.

that's because labor is a lot cheaper than in those countries, where there's a lot more jobs that require education

Labour is really cheap in South Africa. It's probably cheaper to employ someone to perform a task than it is to automate it, as is would be in Europe which has higher labour costs

Same as in Greece there are (traditionally, I don't know currently) 3 people handling every bus. One driver and two to take payments etc.

>One driver and two to take payments etc.

What the heck?

This hasn't been true in decades, but yeah, buses used to have a ticket seller/collector on board (εισπράκτορας). Buses in Greek cities are busy enough that the driver can't do both jobs, like some U.S. systems do, without unreasonable stop dwell times (especially in the days when you could get change on board!). To keep things going, the driver would pull away from the stop ASAP, and the ticket seller would take payment from the newly boarded people while the bus was moving.

On most buses there'd be 1 driver and 1 ticket collector, at least by the 1990s. There might be 2 collectors on long articulated buses, one near the front and one near the back.

The last vestiges of that system were phased out with the drachma/euro conversion around 2000, when everything had to be changed over anyway. Nowadays most Greek cities use a proof-of-payment system, where you have to buy and/or validate a ticket yourself from self-service machines. Then roving inspectors get on buses randomly and fine people who can't produce a current ticket.

The old system has been gone long enough that there are nostalgia articles like, "Do you remember the days when buses had an 'eispraktoras'?". The last two photos here show a ticket collector station at the rear door, which would have a cash drawer under the counter for making change: https://www.enimerotiko.gr/ellada/thymasai-tote-poy-ta-leofo...

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