pain in the face

One can only feel sorry for the poor guys that are driving the gondolas, up and down the fake water channel in the Villagio Shopping Mall.
Most of the people walk around the mall and even take the gondolas’ rides without noticing that these guys are real human beings guiding these gondolas.
If you stop and observe these guys’ faces, you will unhappiness, emptiness, boredom and almost pain. They look like they are being tortured or they are serving a life sentence with no hope of escape.
And who is to blame them, when they probably have one of the most boring jobs in that mall. There is simply no interaction between them and the fake world the surround them during their shift (I just hope that for their sanity, it’s a very short one).