You’ve seen them on the side of the road: woodland fairies, leprechauns, Easter bunnies, cheerleaders, baseball players, and hula dancers. Also pandas, bumblebees, ladybugs, grapes, the Statue of Liberty, witches, pumpkins, hearts, Dorothies, tuxedoed gentlemen, and snowmen. They dance and gyrate, twirling signs and causing a scene. It’s old-fashioned advertising at its finest. Passing drivers can’t help but take notice of these peculiar characters. We are called human directionals, and we are not hired simply to don the requisite costumes and hold the signs, but to dance, smile, and perform. We’re not your average bored-looking guy spinning a sign for $5 pizza. We are entertainers.
In college, I picked up several shifts a week as a directional, depending on how much work was available from Eastern Onion, the company that contracted entertainers to leasing offices all over the metro Atlanta area. For a few hours, I would blast my iPod and shake my groove thing without a care in the world. I was paid to dance, not to dance well. So the street became my stage, and I performed my interpretive dances to Florence and the Machine with bravado, angry ballet to Brand New and my loud, belted rendition of Beyoncé’s “Diva” in front of drivers and pedestrians alike.
They don’t call it Hotlanta without reason, however, and sometimes those hours in the sun could be brutal. My energy occasionally waned, but dedicated to my job, I kept on dancing. Every human directional out there is a dance champion, never stopping til their work is done. Directionals are self-regulated, and are permitted a 15-minute break every hour, with shifts generally lasting anywhere from three to six hours. Once in the zone, a directional is left with the complexities of his or her own mind and the spontaneous offerings of an iPod Shuffle. Whether sober or under the influence of substances (though all directionals interviewed agreed that drugs and alcohol generally dehydrate and detract from their performance and overall well-being), directionals tend to describe their dancing as a spiritual experience, similar to the high that ravers sometimes describe.
I’ve heard people casually discussing the human directionals when I’ve been off-duty around people who don’t know I have this job, and they express pity for us, saying it must be an awful gig. Nearly every shift, at least one person will walk up looking puzzled, indicate for me to take my earbuds out, and ask me what the hell I’m doing out here? Am I crazy?
Usually hearing what my hourly wage is shuts them up.
Human directional veteran Josalin Saffer said that on one particularly tough and sweltering shift as the red cheerleader, she couldn’t grasp reality or hold onto a single coherent thought. She tried alternating between grasping at the air as hard as she could, standing frozen, and attempting to do math problems on her breaks, but the job she usually found to be a safe haven and sanctuary became torture. This was the same day someone drove by and yelled from their car, “Get a real job!”
But I love what I do. It’s uninterrupted time to think while wearing a costume, a job that comes with built-in exercise. It’s like getting paid to work out, but as a form of entertainment. It’s perfect for shameless endurance athletes with a flair for the dramatic. Saffer said, “I love it. I don’t feel like I’m working at all. I planned my entire trip to Thailand on this job and made a five-year plan for myself. I get really introspective.”
That being said, this job is best suited for a certain type of person. You must have no shame. Julia Dragoo, a former human directional and friend of Saffer’s, said, “I personally did not enjoy it. It was too secluded for me. I need interaction constantly. It is however, perfect for people like Josalin. She never doubts her dancing skills for one second and always rocks it.”
People judge us from their cars, but for us, dancing and working are one and the same, and how many people can say that about their job? Human directional Lydia Benitez said, “Holding signs is like my weekly therapy. It’s the perfect time to reflect on my life, to pray, to sing worship songs, to sing goofy songs, to let all my goofy dancing out that no one else appreciates. It’s solitude I get paid for. I have a fantasy in my head that I am like a little ray of sunshine to people’s lives while I’m out waving at them as they drive by. And the moments when I’m perfectly happy in worship are so delicately completed by making eye contact with a stranger driving by waving back at me and smiling.”
Human directionals making a positive impact? Yep. It turns out, being free, uninhibited, and simply open to the world around you actually can affect people, even if just to make them crack a smile on their commute. Perhaps one of my most transcendent moments was when a man approached me on the corner of Marietta Street Northwest and Howell Mill Road and said in prophetic tones, “I look in your eyes and I see joy. You have a light. Never let it go out, child.” Things like this happen frequently on the job, and make up for the drive-by honkers and the occasional pervs who pass back and forth in their cars, following us on our breaks asking for a date or for sex (this only happened once).
But most of the attention we receive is welcomed, and part of the thrill of the job. Directional James Fairchild said, “If I were ever driving down the road seeing some of my own performances, I think it would be hysterical. The best were when they would give me five-hour shifts in July. By the fifth hour my performance would be purely sexual, humping the sign, lewd positions.”
Fairchild was my original link to the world of human directionals, and my unofficial recruiter. He sat next to me at a party a few years ago and offered me a beer, which I declined, and then offered me the Eastern Onion phone number and his reference, which I accepted. I was broke and too clumsy and absent-minded to find work as a barista or server. Every directional is referred to Eastern Office by word of mouth. Many, like myself, are tired of or just not cut out for the service industry, and jumped on the opportunity to earn wages as a town jester.
Fairchild said, “I felt very fortunate to have that job and not be pushing dishes or some other 30 hour a week job.” No other job has offered me this kind of flexibility, creativity, and range of motion. Want to go on vacation for a week? Don’t worry about asking for time off. Just don’t call in. Generally, directionals call the Eastern Onion office at the start of each week to let owners Mary Sue and Lynn know their availability for the week, and they put your name on the board. If they secure a job for you, they give you a call and set everything up, letting you know which costume to wear, where to get the giant arrow-shaped sign emblazoned with “NOW LEASING!” and a phone number.
I suppose the great question we’re all left with is–does this kinetic and clown-like advertising work? It must, or leasing offices wouldn’t keep hiring us. Human directionals are not involved in the marketing plans of the companies we dance for. They don’t know anything about how business is going. They just know they’re on the clock to cause a stir and create a scene.
At times I’ve felt shamed by people’s reactions, usually when I wore the red cheerleader costume. The archetypal cheerleader has become a highly sexualized image in the minds of most Americans, and the least seductive and libido-crushing dance moves still manage to elicit whistles and rowdy honks from aroused commuters. Walking into nearby businesses to use the restroom or refill a water bottle has resulted in eyebrow raises and sneers from people who have made up their minds about my character based on the costume, which is actually quite modest.
But on several occasions, I’ve stumbled into the leasing office at the end of a shift, dragging my sign behind me, exhausted and drenched in my own sweat, only to hear rave reviews from the agents on duty. In those moments, I’ve felt genuinely affirmed for an honest day’s hard work. They comment on my amazing stamina and energy and appreciate the business they say I’ve helped drive in, quite literally. It’s because I’ve taken with me the philosophy of doing everything I do to the best of my ability that I feel pride in these moments. Because dancing, waving, and busting a move is not any more or less respectable than toiling in an office all day.
