Impossible Tasks for Rabbits

Too cold to run to the convenient store for a six-pack? Too many Allen wrenches necessary for you to put together that Vrådal loft bed that you bought from Ikea? Want someone to walk Fido while you finish the last 1,126 pages of War and Peace?

If you need something done but you’re too lazy or unqualified to do it yourself — and if you live in certain metropolitan areas — then you can have one of the “runners” at TaskRabbit do it for you. It’s a service that turns grunt work into a game. Simply post the task that needs to be done, and runners bid for the opportunity to do it.

There is no limit to the types of tasks that are listed. A recent posting asked, “Do you know a Girl Scout from whom I can place a cookie order?” One of the top runners completed the task “Prank Call Our Customer Service Rep” in which he posed as an animal-welfare activist who sought donations to buy Viagra for soon-to-be-extinct Siberian tigers [“Call of Duty,” Wired, Aug 2011].

That’s funny stuff.

I received no compensation from TaskRabbit to write this post, nor am I an angel investor; I just think it’s a great idea. There ought to be a similar service for intellectual tasks…

• Statistician needed to massage data from a research study to get the results we’d like.
• Geometer needed to square a circle and/or trisect an angle.
• Looking for contractor to build real-life version of Waterfall by M. C. Escher.
• Puzzler needed to solve the following slider puzzle:
• Logician needed to figure out who shaves the Barber of Seville.
• Number theorist needed to rationalize the denominator of a fraction with sqrt(pi) in the denominator.
• Spatial geometrician needed to get Dirk Gently’s couch unstuck, or to walk through a revolving door with a pair of skis on her shoulder.
• Engineer and hopeless romantic needed to kiss a girl by walking halfway to her, then halfway again, then halfway again, …