Rent-An-Employee

We’ve just received word that Flaxseed Hipsterbeerd, the hottest new rom-com actor in Hollywood, has decided to do something about his male pattern baldness, and is coming to our hair plug salon to see if we can help him. We’ve never had an A-lister in before. And as we look around the salon and see our only two employees listlessly playing Go Fish by the coffee machine, we decide we need to do something to project the image of a healthier, more vibrant business. Flaxseed isn’t going to want to get his hair plugs from an empty, unpopular salon.

So we do what any other business owner would do in this situation: we embrace the rent-an-employee concept. A “rent-an-employee” is a person we pay to come into our place of work, not to work, but to pretend to work. (Which, in some places, is roughly the same thing.) They’re there to make our business look busy and successful.

For example, on the day of Flaxseed’s consultation, our plan is to have five rent-an-employees, preferably with full heads of gloriously shiny hair—that will pretend to be hair plug technicians. They’ll wear smart outfits and run around looking busy. If we also bribe some of our follicly-challenged friends to sit in as fake clients, then when Flaxseed walks in, he’ll be wowed by what a hive of activity our salon is, and he’ll no doubt hire us for all of his hair plug needs.

This isn’t the most ethical business strategy in the history of the world, but it’s not technically illegal, either. And besides, once Flaxseed signs on as a client, he might bring his other A-lister friends along as well. And then we won’t need to hire rent-an-employees after all, because we’ll have to hire real ones.