A curious shift in employment

From Der Spiegel online comes this story of people dropping one career for another:

From Johns to Geriatrics
A new project in Germany is teaching prostitutes a wholly new bedside manner -- retraining them to become care workers for the elderly. Many experts consider women with experience in the sex trade to be especially well suited to the job.

She used to call herself "Angie" and described herself to potential customers as "the buxom blonde from Bochum -- without taboos and available around the clock." She satisfied machos and mama's boys, blue-collar workers and ivory-tower academics, old and young. She learned how to adjust to completely different temperaments and needs. She did it six years long four or five times a day. Then she got pregnant, cancelled her ad in the newspaper and changed her job.

Angie, the whore, became Angelika the care worker for the elderly. Employed by a mobile social care service, the one-time blonde now has short brown hair and has traded her stilettos for sensible shoes. Instead of taking care of their sexual needs, she now helps her customers bathe and change their bandages. "It's easy for me," says Angelika, who just finished her training.

A bit more:

"It was a logical move," says Rita K�hn from Diakone Westfalen, which runs nursing homes across the country and is organizing the project. According to K�hn, prostitutes have "good people skills," aren't easily disgusted and have "zero fear of contact."

And part of the reason:

"The job situation is miserable," says Zohren, who estimates there are at least 50,000 prostitutes in North Rhine-Westphalia alone. The hooker surplus has led to a "dramatic drop in prices," meaning a john can get pretty much anything he wants for �30 these days. The only time any real money is to be made is during big events like a recent hunting trade fair in Dortmund.

Makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Prostitution is legal there and these ladies are experienced in making someone feel very good. 80-year olds need to feel good too -- the physical needs are different but the psychology and caregiving is not.