Magazine vendor's battle with alcoholism

Many a commuter will recognise the man in the photograph as he sells the magazine “Surprise” three days a week on one of the approaches to Zug station. In a recent interview with a journalist of the Zuger Zeitung, Hans Rhyner outlined how he became an alcoholic at the age of 21 but also how his current job, and his approach to it, keeps him going.
 
At a time when people are rushing to the station with so many things on their mind, sometimes the only cheerful “good morning” you hear comes from the 63-year-old, who was born in Elm in the canton of Glarus.
 
Rhyner sells some 30 copies of “Surprise” a week, not only at the station approach near the Metalli centre, but also in front of the Manor department store in Schaffhausen. He has to pay the publisher CHF 3.30 for each copy but the remainder of the CHF 6.00 selling price he is able to keep himself. Until one year ago, he was also getting some help from social services but now he relies solely on selling “Surprise” and taking people on alternative tours of Zurich, showing them another side of the city, where down-and-outs live, for example, for which he is paid CHF 65 a time.
 
While on his finances, Rhyner said he has never actually fallen into poverty, but has been very close to it. For years, his problem has been alcohol, though at present he is dry. “The trouble is, even when you are off it, the temptation to have another drink is always there,” he said, as he began to tell the journalist about his life when he lived in Glarus. “My father died just as I had started an apprenticeship,” he said. “I was very attached to him, but young men do not cry, do they?” It was at this point he turned to alcohol, as it helped make him forget things. Then he moved to Zurich where he enjoyed the companionship of other drinkers and the general anonymity of a big city. “It is there where you are no longer Hans, you are just one among many,” he said. He recognised alcohol had become a problem but, thanks to a colleague, he was put in touch with Alcoholics Anonymous. It was way back in 1975, when, as a 21-year-old, he admitted his addiction. Fortunately, he has been dry since 2010, after suffering a setback in 2009, which led to his losing his then job as a delivery man for a department store. He loved going out to customers and bringing them things, sometimes even taking away the replaced item for them. Then he met a woman who was an alcoholic. “We moved into a flat together and this was when I started drinking again.” 
 
When his employer got to know, he was taken off the delivery job and given a job in a warehouse, but he missed the contact with people his previous job provided. It is this contact he is able to enjoy with his current job selling magazines. “If you were to stand there with a miserable expression on your face or were a bit too pushy, then you would not sell many magazines, would you?” he asked. “This why I think it is better to be friendly and more reserved, helping the odd person with a heavy suitcase or calling the lift for them,” he said, adding also that the job provides him with a structure to his day, not to mention selling a good product. He mentioned how he really enjoyed selling, but he also gives few copies away if he can see people are genuinely interested; the journalist benefited from a free copy, too.
 
Describing his job as more as a hobby, if not a therapy, Rhyner has only a few years left before he retires, though what is sure is that, even then, he is not planning on spending too much time alone.