The University Hospital, Newark, is looking for people to do clerical work, run errands and visit patients.
Los Angeles and San Francisco pay suspended teachers to answer phones, work in warehouses, or just stay home; in Chicago they do clerical work.
In Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin and other states, auditors and tax collectors have been pulled off the hunt for tax cheats to do clerical work because of budget cuts.
The 30-year-old organization needs volunteers to sort and pack food, do clerical work, make phone calls, collect food at food drives and help with seven mailings a year.
Some may do clerical work, sales work or accounting work, but what they generally do not do, as Ms. Haneda learned bitterly, is rise above this lowly status and enter career tracks largely reserved for men.
Karen Leadley is employed by Kirkbride, whose brother lives in her flat near her constituency, on a part-time salary of £12,000 to do clerical work for her from her home in Wimborne, Dorset.
He taught school, did clerical work, and studied law, being admitted to the bar in 1781.
The assignments usually range from doing clerical work in government agencies to cleaning public parks.
