Rental Person Who Does Nothing is a fascinating book. The true story of a man in Japan who literally rents himself out to ‘do nothing’ for most of the time.
Services he offers are for things that actually matter: he goes to restaurants with people who don’t want to eat alone, is the other player in a board game or keeps a space in the park for someone to come view the cherry blossom.
Shoji (a Japanese earthquake expert) started his own ‘job’ to offer services for the lonely and socially anxious, after a boss told him that he contributed nothing, and it made no difference whether he showed up to work or not.
So he wondered if a person who ‘does nothing’ could still have a place in the world. With one tweet, his Rental Person service was born.
He now rents himself out for useful services, to help others. This can be listening to a secret that someone needs to reveal, ‘testing’ how it would be to have someone live with you, or even wave goodbye if you leave a train station for a long journey.
The rest of the time – he does nothing!
