A Japanese man — known as "Rental-Do-Nothing-Man" — with an enormous following on social media is paid JPY 10,000 ($71) an hour to accompany clients and simply exist as a companion.
What Happened: A 38-year-old man, Shoji Morimoto, advertises himself as a person who can "eat and drink, and give simple feedback, but do nothing more."
"Basically, I rent myself out. My job is to be wherever my clients want me to be and to do nothing in particular," Morimoto told Reuters, adding that he has handled more than 4,000 sessions in the past four years.
Morimoto, who has nearly a quarter of a million followers on Twitter, told the publication that he finds most of his clients on the micro-blogging platform. Out of which, he said, almost a quarter of those are repeat customers, including people who have hired him nearly 270 times.
Morimoto shared that in his job, he has done a range of things from going to a park to play on a see-saw with a person to beaming and waving through a train window at a complete stranger who wanted a send-off. However, this doesn't mean he will do anything; according to Morimoto, he has turned down many offers, including one to move a fridge and another to go to Cambodia.
Before finding his real potential, Morimoto worked at a publishing company and was often rebuked for "doing nothing."
"I started wondering what would happen if I provided my ability to 'do nothing' as a service to clients," he said.
"People tend to think that my 'doing nothing' is valuable because it is useful (for others) ... But it's fine to really not do anything. People do not have to be useful in any specific way," he added.
Originally published Sept. 6, 2022.
Photo by Hung Chung Chih on Shutterstock (For representative purposes only, the person in the photo is not Shoji Morimoto)
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