Covering a non-job
Easiest job ever was temporary cover for a guy called John who worked in a large disability-related charity. John's job was in reprographics and he'd worked there for 30+ years - he showed me a lovely anniversary album the staff had made for him during our hand-over.

Now reprographics means copying, and copying - back in the day - was, I presume, a time consuming task. Carbon copies, all kinds of hand-cranked mechanical devices for "automating" the process and so on. It was boring job no doubt, but a proper one.

However we now have these things called photocopiers, that as well as allowing us to produce images of our posteriors, do a pretty good job of copying documents. So over 30 years John's job had gone from quite integral to the organisation to utterly obsolete. But John was near retirement age, and he had the disability that the charity worked on, so they obivously couldn't bring themselves to sack him. Despite the fact that his job now involved having two photocopiers in his 'office' in the basement of the building and doing the photocopying of any of the members of staff who were too lazy to do their own (there were photocopiers all round the rest of the building anyway).

So John was going on holiday. Obviously management thought that it would be insensitive not to get a temp in to cover for him, as it might demonstrate that his job was pointless. So I arrived from the agency to do the photocopying.

However no one told any of the staff this - they knew he was off on holiday and sensibly assumed that the basement office would be empty. When one of them ventured down to the basement to leave John some photocopying 'to do on his return', she was shocked to find a gangly youth sitting at his desk, with headphones on, reading Crime and Punishment.

Length? A week and a day of audio-literary employment bliss.
(annexed, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 13:15, Reply)

My first job was at an arcade
I got paid to give free credits to friends, give away toys for way less tickets than they cost, giving away tickets for cash, taking over the Mortal Kombat machine and defying all challengers with an impressive 133-5-0 career over 6 weeks. We had area 51 tourneys and Gamestop was right across from us. We traded free plays for games and the like.
The only reason I left that job was because the company that owned it were paid to close it down. It was easily the best and easiest job ever, the only job I miss.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 13:09, 1 reply)

I've had a few
Last year I photocopied a course reader and two out of print novels for my thesis supervisor. Got paid $15/hr to mindlessly photocopy page after page after page...

A bit later he got me to act as a research assistant, which was just more photocopying.

Then there's my part-time job at a video store, which I've had for five years. Tonight I watched the first season of Venture Bros. Next shift I might watch a western, I haven't decided yet.
(ElGranto, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 13:06, 1 reply)

Woodland Reading
As a young lad living in a London suburb, delivery of the local newspaper was a job many of us had for a very short space of time.

Getting the gig was easy, you basically called a number in the paper, they agreed to pay a tiny fee (usually about a fiver for a couple of hundred papers IIRC)and a week later a car dropped said papers on your doorstep.

Occasionally a kid or two would actually keep their side of the bargain and spend the 3+ hours necessary to prepare and deliver the papers. Most though just dumped the lot in the woods, picked up the cash and waited to get fired.

Amazingly this process could take anything up to a month to come to fruition. At that age, twenty notes for doing sweet FA is as good as it gets. Cash-back!
(BinDipper, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 13:05, Reply)

The fact
that I'm writing this at my desk at one o'clock on a Thursday must prove something....
(greatoldone Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl f'tagn, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 13:03, 4 replies)

Did I tell you about that time I picked up that guy with the beard?
Said he'd written part of the old testament - all I know is, he wasn't that choosy.
(sabre-tooth monkey, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:59, Reply)

Paid to play games
When I was about 12, I got paid to play text-based adventure games on an Apple II for hours for a psychology experiment. It turned out the whole thing was designed to see how people respond to receiving a reward (points in the game); basically, I was being compared to a chicken receiving feed for hitting a button.

I'd have done it for free, but ended up earning more than I would've for lugging newspapers around in the rain. It was an important lesson in how computers can be used to avoid hard work.
( malevole, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:56, 2 replies)

Back when
I used to work for a now (probably unsurprisingly) defunct retailer, I inherited a job that was mostly number crunching. The previous incumbent used to spend hours manipulating figures in pencil on huge sheets of paper, trying to make everything balance.
Cue two days work building a spreadsheet that did the entire week's work by about ten o'clock on Monday. Much skiving followed. Had that job for three years 'til they caught on and made me redundant.

Also, the boss was a bit of an alky, and the usual two-hour lunch breaks in the pub could also be nicely extended simply by timing them so that they ended just as he was coming in. He'd always buy you a pint.

Lovely chap. Drank himself to death, but lovely chap.
(greatoldone Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl f'tagn, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:55, Reply)

Being an exam invigilator....
... for mock GCSEs at the start of this year. I only got the job because they were short a few people and my mum is a teacher at the school. And it was £190ish for about three hours a day over a week.

Basically I got to look vaguely smart, wander around a hall/gym full of students in exam conditions and watch them not cheat. There was the occasional fetching of extra sheets of paper, rulers, calculators etc. and the odd tissue or glass of water for kids with a cold. Other than that, I got to hang out in the science department drinking tea and playing Professor Layton until the end of the day when I got a lift home.

Easiest money I've ever made right there.
(TuftyBee should have been working on, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:53, 4 replies)

I had a paper round, around the age of 12\13
The paper shop was just around the corner from me, and my round was 3 papers a day, 5 days a week.

If it was raining, the boss would take me out in his car to deliver the papers. Using rain as his excuse, he just wanted to show his vast selection of motors, taking a different one each time.

I earned a pittance, but did fuck all work, so it balanced out.

Nowadays I surf websites for a living. I have to write reports on them, but can't say it's too taxing.
( LemonEntryMyDearWatson This time, Moriarty, the hand is on the other foot, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:49, Reply)

I'm a motoring journalist...
...I drive cars and write about them.

I even get to wear jeans and trainers to the office too, and t-shirts with rude slogans on them. I love the snotty looks I get from suited commuters.
( The Pollitt chooses to listen to Enya on, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:48, 3 replies)

Baby sitting a superyacht.
Fine, if the thing catches fire, or starts sinking then you're in for a rough time.

However, that never happens. What you do is get paid £150 for sitting around, watching films, surfing the internet, eating food and drinking beer. All on someone else's multimillion pound boat. All you have to do is be there, after that what you do is up to you.
(Woodlouse say it with flowers. Send her a Triffid, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:46, 6 replies)

Making your own fun
One Christmas when I was a student, I worked in Woolworths on the High St. in the little town where I grew up

I'd been taken on to help with the 'Christmas Rush', which didn't especially seem to materialise. Plus the fact, my responsibility was clearly defined as being 'looking after the store-room'.

One or two deliveries arrived a day, and I rolled some cages off the lorry and put them away tidily. My only other responsibility was helping the people who worked on the shop floor find things when they came in. Since I was doing 8 hour shifts, this was not a lot to keep me occupied. I had to create my own fun.

- Creating a racetrack around the vast storeroom using boxes as the four corners or a square track, then racing around on a child's scooter and trying to improve my time daily
- Also attempting the above with a pallet-truck, resulting in the destruction of several boxes of Christmas Chocolate Selection packs due to an unfortunate cornering mishap in the chocolate section
- Having found a couple of old tents on a shelf at the back, creating a campsite tableaux peopled (if you can call it that) with cuddly toys
- Chalking some stumps on the wall and having a bit of cricket practice, with the 6'5 store manager using a 2' child's bat salvaged from a kit
- Breaking my own keepy-uppy record
- Reading a book in the toilet
- Taking up smoking. Just so I had an excuse to go and stand outside for five minutes

The genuine highlight of my day was if someone looked dodgy downstairs and I, being the only employee in my own clothes since I was the store-room monkey, was called down to play spies and trail some junkies around the toy dept.

Could have been boring, but years as a student had inured me to inaction. It was pure bliss... and I got paid.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:46, Reply)

I wish to complain!
The complaints QOTW was not long enough!

Hurrumph
(SpangoTheWonderBadger is brewing beer, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:45, 4 replies)

Retail Work
I used to work for a major stationers after I left uni (its Theo from Dragon's Den place) and it was mint. The boss was possibly the greastest guy ever. He'd let you come in as late as you want, provided you buy him a bacon butty, he'd bring his guitar in and I'd be playing that whilst customers needed serving, he'd let you come in hungover and proceed to buy you ale after closing. Basically, I bummed around and got paid for it. Amazing
(ProfessorNoShoes wishes he was better at Photoshop, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:38, 1 reply)

Traffic Surveys
Most of the time you are relentlessly counting vehicles and failing miserably to document with any sort of accuracy what is racing up and down your particular stretch. But every now and then you get a real boondoggler.

When I was a poor stude I worked for a civil engineering company working on a project to do with the widening of the A1(M). This one time I was asked to find a couple of friends and we were driven by our supervisor to the drop off point. Here we sat in deckchairs and were given notepads and pens and told to document what ever came through an underpass underneath the A1.

Over the space of ten hours I counted the grand total of 2 horses (with riders) and a family of four on bicycles (both twice). Nice sunny morning turned into a nice sunny day and our supervisor, inbetween trips to the driving range, plied us with drinks, newspapers and sandwiches, while my mate Pete threw stones at half a dozen pigs in the adjacent field.

The next week's survey was more interesting. Got pinched by the fuzz for standing on the Northfield roundabout in Milton Springsteen at rush hour. Apparently I was distracting the motorists...
(mersault, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:35, 3 replies)

Easiet?

( sporters I’m sincerely gratitude to you, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:30, 2 replies)

Call Cantre
I used to phone numbers to see if they would ring or not.
Easy, but very very boring
(sex drugs and jellied eels, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:30, 1 reply)

6th?
Nowhere near.
( monkeyboyalpha jumping on the bandwagon since, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:29, Reply)

I worked in a pub
My favourite ever job was working as a pot washer in a pub between the ages of 17 and 19. Most people laugh when they hear I was a pot washer at what is quite an old age to be doing such simple work.

The pub I worked at was in the poshest area within a 50 mile radius of my house and so the prices reflected that, burger and chips for £18, fuck that!

Anyway, my days consisted of doing nothing productive, there was no customers, we'd probably sell about 10 meals a day. One of the managers there was one of the funniest people I've ever met, we'd just sit in the 'staff room' and get stoned, or cook ourselves some nachos and help ourselves to some lager. It was brilliant.

I eventually got sacked when the owner of the pub came in to check up on me and noticed I didn't actually know how to turn the big dish washer on after 2 whole years there.

I want to go back.
(nobface part time paperboy full time gangsta, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:27, Reply)

night shift security guard at Aldi
it's not like anyone wants to steal from a shop that sells tins of beans for 3p!

if you're thinking of stealing from an Aldi or a Lidl, you really are tapping on the bottom of the barrel!
(Anne Frank started to build a loft conversion on, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:27, Reply)

I spent two weeks as a caretaker for a housing estate in Bethnal Green
After the first three days, everyone in the estate kept telling me the place was looking really tidy. For the second week, I read a book, and occasionally emptied a bin.

Edit: Dear Question-Setter. I did the above when I was a student, and student funding was sort-of ok in those days. I suspect more than half of students will have a job they can talk about.
(sabre-tooth monkey, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:24, Reply)

My dad
used to test the durability and stability of hospital equipment. Which loosely translates to wheel a trolley for the x amount of miles and see if it breaks.

Most of the time he just made up how far it got before it broke because he was too lazy to get paid to walk up and down a halfway for a bit
(NuffMuff fucks shrubbery, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:23, Reply)

A large, national tyre and exhaust company that rhymes with "Motor Gay"
I worked in their head office in Reading, where I did mostly evening shifts in their computer room.

A day's work comprised:
- Arrive for work. Schedule batch jobs
- Go to the Chinese and pick up the set meal for one
- Scoff set meal for one, check batch jobs are OK
- Schedule the rest of the jobs, nip into The Crown over the road for a pint
- Pop back and check everything's OK
- Another pint
- Repeat until end of shift
- Go home

Those were the days. I put on two stone in six months.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:22, 3 replies)

5th
The one i did this morning. Slipped out effortlessly and needed the minimum of wiping to clean
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:20, Reply)

Being a ...
Student :)
(MissFlee tried again on, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:19, 3 replies)

A millionth?!
o.o
( vix0r was not Matthew on, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:18, Reply)

Mine
I.e.

Lovely old lady called me out (after a recommendation from one of her friends) as she was struggling with her laptop, I go there to be greeted by scones and 'real' lemonade. Very nice indeed, sorted out her lappy (just needed IE8 putting on for her yahoo mail to work) chatted for about an hour while doing all this (slow, slow connection) and then tootled off.... £20 cheers, back to the pub.
(Kip, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:18, 2 replies)

1st !!!!

Edit : First ever First !! Wooooooo !!

Story to follow....promise
(Bored In Work, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:18, 6 replies)