Counting pedestrians...
I left school with very little idea what to do. For the most part I took massive drugs every two weeks when a little green cheque would appear through the letterbox of my parent's house; however, getting this little green cheque involved having to get up early once a fortnight and signing something-or-other in a place where they displayed cards with really shit jobs advertised on them.
One of these rather inconvienient times involved some lady saying something along the lines of "...so I'll just pop your application into them shall I?", I vaguely remember mumbling something along the lines of "...errr...if you want".

And so it began. The next thing I know, it was the middle of summer and I was being paid around 80 quid a day to sit in a field and count pedestrians along a path that used to exist circa 1789.
I took plenty of fizzy orange with me, loads of books, a walkman and a board so I could put the bits of paper that they gave me on to tick when pedestrians walked past.
For 12 hours a day.
It was bloody brilliant. It didn't rain once, and I got to read loads of books - I was a huge bookworm in those days - would be now, but work and life gets in the way.
On one occasion though, I'd fallen asleep, and was woken up by a couple of ramblers who had a map with this particular path on it.
I say woken up, but I couldn't move. I could hear them speaking: "Shall we wake him up?, "Nah, leave him, he's asleep", "...but it looks like he's doing some sort of survey..." etc...
I was paralysed from the neck down - I'm lead to believe that this is what happens if you wake during an REM state, but I don't know for sure. It was bloody terrifying.
Eventually I snapped out of paralysis with a jolt, to the surprise of the ramblers.
I actually took the job quite seriously, and asked them which path (there were two, I was sitting (sleeping) at the intersection) they were intending to continue along, and ticked the box. In my half-awake state I forgot to ask which path they'd walked down, so I made it up.
The only two "pedestrians" I'd seen in two weeks and I had to make it up!
When I went back to see the bloke who dished out the money, I handed my expenses form to him.
He looked up and said "Are you sure?"
I said, "Well, yes, I had to drive 4 miles each way to the field for 10 days, so I put 40 miles."
He replied, "No, you misunderstand me. The bloke who handed his form in before you lives 2 miles from the field he was in. He's put down 560 miles. I'll just pop another zero on yours shall I?"

Gobsmacked wasn't the word. They seemed to like throwing money down the pan, literally in my case, as I'm pretty sure I spent the money on beer.
(dchurch bah, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 19:33, 2 replies)

isn't that 80 miles?

*ducks*
(shanterbabs, Wed 15 Sep 2010, 18:08, closed)

Oops!
Quite right too - the numbers were more-or-less made up as I don't have that good a memory (or maths skills it seems), but the point was the same. The expenses people were putting in were massive lies.
(dchurch bah, Wed 15 Sep 2010, 21:15, closed)