Some moms get flowers for Mother’s Day; Paige Singh got to see Donald Trump on trial.


The Bay Area mom, in town from California to accompany her husband on business, snagged a spot on Tuesday for what has quickly become one of the hottest tickets in New York City, thanks to her husband and the professional line-stander he hired as a Mother’s Day gift to hold a spot for her in the queue outside the courthouse.


“My husband? He thinks it’s crazy,” she said. And her kids “just laugh.”


But for Singh, the hundreds of dollars she sent via Zelle to a stranger holding her place outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse was well worth the chance to see the former president of the United States on trial.


The paid place-holding went so well that Singh, who also attended part of E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Trump, changed her travel plans to squeeze in an extra day at the court.


“It was so easy, so I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll go Tuesday.’ So I changed my flight,” she said.


Professional line-standers are a growing part of the gig economy. But the criminal trial of a former president accused of illegally covering up hush money payments to a porn star has translated into a windfall for people who get paid to wait — and who, as the trial goes on, have increasingly been hired by members of the general public with no stake in the trial other than curiosity.


“We’ve definitely had to staff up,” said Robert Samuel, who runs Same Ole Line Dudes, which bills itself as “New York’s Premier Professional Line Sitting Company.”


For the Trump trial, Samuel doubled his prices, expanded his stable of standers from 26 to 32, and has been too busy to watch the “Bridgerton” episodes he loaded on his iPad to pass the time during waits.


Admission to the court is free, of course, but it is first come, first served, and seating is limited. The first person in line Wednesday morning had paid $1,800 to have someone else hold that spot. A little further back in line, a woman was offering up her spot for $450.


“This is a unique experience that you can only see here,” Samuel said.


In New York, professional line-standers are more familiar working the queues of restaurants that don’t take reservations, ticket booths, sample sales, book signings, pop-up events and new product launches — anywhere that someone with more money than time might want to pay someone to wait.


“Skip the queues and enjoy your time in the big city!” reads the page advertising line-standing services on TaskRabbit, the gig work platform. “Even the DMV can be conquered with help from Taskers!”


In Washington, line-standers have long been a quiet but essential cog of the influence economy, where lobbyists and lawyers who charge their clients hundreds of dollars an hour hire others for $60 an hour (for a three-hour minimum) to wait in line and secure spots for them at congressional hearings and major court cases.


One legal courier company touts its “high quality line standing services for Congressional hearings or other events” while another boasts they’ve “helped our clients get very difficult to obtain seats for hearings on Energy, Telecommunications, Broadcasting, Health Care, Banking, Congressional Ethics, and more.”


Elsewhere, line-standers, like their ride-share-driving brethren, convene on big events, like billionaire Warren Buffett’s annual meeting in Omaha, which can attract twice as many people as there are seats. Hiring someone to wait in line is “probably what I would do” to get in, Buffett himself said in 2017, according to The Wall Street Journal.


Aside from lawyers, media outlets are also a bread-and-butter client of those who wait in lines, given the limited space at high-profile trials and the imperative for reporters to be in the room for proceedings that are not televised.


But the Trump trial, especially during this past week’s star witness testimony from Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen, has led ordinary Americans to hire professional line-sitters like never before.


One woman — a lawyer and self-described “political junkie” who declined to give her name — ended up paying $750 for someone to hold a spot in line for her overnight after trying to get in line herself the previous day. When she showed up the first time, she realized she was already too late and would not make it inside. It was 4 a.m.