I got paid to go to Florida and the Bahamas
The company I work for tests military aircraft, so we took ours to the bahamas via florida for a test, sadly we never got that far. One in the uk crashed and we were grounded in florida for 5 months. I was only out there for three (and we still made it to the island) but in total I spent 3 months in Florida, in a TOP hotel, having a generally smashing time.
( Spaniels Ears, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 12:01, Reply)

I see dumb people
I was once employed by British Gas to open up two different databases on the same pc and to manually type the records from one into the other. When I mentioned that they could do this automatically I was slapped down and told that "if it was possible they would have done it already". Well maybe it would have been done already if they weren't total fucking retards.

I excused myself to go for a cigarette and never returned.
(ShadowTail, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:38, Reply)

Baggage handling (for £infinity p/h)
I spent three months, immediately following my graduation, being paid to *not* handle baggage at Gatwick. It was when Servisair were bidding for the Heathrow Terminal Five baggage handling contract. Somewhat speculatively, they recruited around 300 new staff to show how serious they were - this was back in the days when there was a still a suspicion that T5 might be finished before all the recruits reached retirement. They trained us (five days driving baggage trolleys in figure eights at RAF Swindon), signed three month contracts with us and told us to go home and wait to be summoned.

After a week's waiting, I got bored and got a cash-in-hand job picking apples on a local fruit farm. After a month I got really bored and moved to Cambridge where I answered the phone in a dog food factory by day and supervised second year undergraduate geology students in the evenings, all this time collecting my full wage from Servisair.

The first communication I rceived from Servisair was notification that my three month contract was up and that they were very sorry to have to let me go.

My favourite part? The effusive reference they gave me despite my never having done a single second's work for the £3,500 they paid me.
(dred, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:35, Reply)

rats!
ooh and my animal loving flatmate was most excited to be given the job of looking after the university rats at kcl.

she came home in tears the next day.

her job was to hold them still whilst the researchers guillotined their heads off...

we spent the next 3 weeks going one, two, three, CHOP to make her cry...
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:24, Reply)

furry animals
a friend and i got paid the princely sum of £20 a saturday to dress up in furry animal suits and give out balloons to children to promote a shop. we also had to have our photos taken with them in the hope that the fond mummies of cheadle would come running into the boutique to get the photo and then buy all the clothes.

might have worked too if the cheapskate owner hadn't skimped massively on the costumes. we had a distinctly grey snoopy with a wobbly head and a distressing hole in the ass and a horrible luminous pink panther that used to give children hysterics at a 3 mile radius...
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:22, Reply)

oh, and I've also been paid to hang around a computer room giving IT advice to freshers
trouble is, I know nothing about computers, so the advice amounted to "reboot it... well, re-type your password and make sure Caps Lock isn't on... oh well, go ask at the helpdesk"

£15 per hour, I tells ya
( manwithunderpantsonhead older than a Time Lord, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:21, Reply)

Hmmm,

I paid got paid to Carpet someone's Chimney before...and I'm not talking in sexual enuendo.

I used to be a carpet fitter.

This strange woman wanted us to put the carpet up her fireplace and then go as far as we could up her chimney!

We did it with the aid of industrial glue after cracking up in the van for hours before at the thought of it!

She asked me if I was 'stalking' her which I said no to, then afterwards she put salt in my tea and told me it was a 'test'...
( Donkey Gums @mattcomedy, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:20, Reply)

testing games
Back in the Amiga days a friend of mine was into selling pirated computer games. A new Amiga (the A1200) was released and he wanted to find out which games would run on the new machine. He paid me a hundred quid to check every game. I think he had 1000+ games, most of them infinitely crappy. It took me an entire night. I was young and needed the money.
(spinoza, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:19, Reply)

a PhD
so far as I can tell, my job involves keeping a chair warm. 2 years in and an exemplary job has been made of it
( manwithunderpantsonhead older than a Time Lord, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:18, Reply)

The Worst Job I Ever Had...

...was with Jayne Mansfield. You know, she was a fantastic bird, big tits, huge bum, and everything like that, but I had the terrible job of retrieving lobsters from her bum.

Actually, I had a job making a certain well-known brand of hair dye for men. My advice? Don't touch it - when you've got someone mixing together acids (yes, acids) when they've only had 5 minutes training, I wouldn't suggest that you put it anywhere near your head. It also had the side-effect of turning my fingernails black.

These would be the same fingernails that fell off into the mixer I was using to make instant custard powder in the same factory. Knowing how it's made, and all the body parts that used to end up in it, I haven't used instant custard powder since...
(Steve The Monkey, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:17, Reply)

a PhD
I've been paid for three years to do sod all. Looking at b3ta takes up a great deal of my day. Whatever you do, don't do a PhD.
( giant_squid, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:17, Reply)

I was paid to eat fruit...
...well, i was meant to pick and provide for the local supermarkets, but when the farmer in charge of the fruit farm is hairy as sin and has the hearing of the average tree, you dont worry about the little things.
(lift yr skinny fists, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:16, Reply)

Prostitution
I have been paid to have sex with a lonely friend of a friend. She wasn't exactly pretty so I declined. 2 months later I had unpaid sex with her.
(Musk ox hygene inspector, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:13, Reply)

I got paid to drink beer
It was for a news story on Bath Uni's library opening 24 hours, so the obvious story for HTV was to have students drinking in a bar.
(geetoo, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:11, Reply)

I got paid to study for my resits
In the middle of a strike and just after I failed my exams, my university gave me a job (They really didn't think this one through very well). All I was allowed to do was to sit around and read anything I wanted and they still paid me. So much quality time was spent revising for my resits.
(Cousin It, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:08, Reply)

a local theatre company
wanted to put on a play based on the songs of obscure 70s soft-rock band Stackridge, and asked a friend to sort out the music for them. he couldn't be bothered, so got me to do it. I just took the original songs and used the karaoke mode on Nero to make a cd for them. in the end, they couldn't get the permission to use the songs, so they couldn't put on the play, but I still got paid £10 for it :D
(Mystery Woo Yay Boy, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:06, Reply)

Eyes
I once got paid £50 to spend two days having my eyes tested by some student opticians, it was their final exam before they were sent out into the real world. One of them told me that I had a sight-threatening eye disease and was lucky not to be blind already... Thankfully she was wrong, but I think she probably failed her exam.
(SillyWilly, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 11:06, Reply)

I get paid to fuck around in a warehouse at Morrisons.
Getting the £3000 floor-machine out and doing donuts on an empty loading bay and using the "license required" rider truck in the walk-in-freezer to see who can slide the furthest.
Quality times.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:54, Reply)

paid to degrade....
i recently went on a stag do in edinburgh. it was after midnight, everyone was well pished up having completed a tour of the local public houses and lapdancing establishments.
as per tradition the stag was restrained, stripped naked, bound and gagged and ritually humiliated (large flesh-coloured dildos were put in his hands which were then taped up securely with duct tape), we then carried 'dildo hands' into a nearby park, took some photos and had a good laugh at the poor sod.
but the ultimate shaming was when a couple of local teenagers, who happened to be passing by, were given £20 to give the stag's knackers a good kicking in. one of them duly obliged! priceless.
(littlerichardsmustache, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:43, Reply)

Body Shop
A friend of mine was once employed by the Body Shop factory to peel bananas. They put you in a small room on your own for no more than 1 hour and you do nothing but peel bananas and separate skin from fruit for their scrubs etc. Apparently after an hour you are on the verge of madness so they rotate you out... Another friend had to work in a heinz factory taking out the black beans from the baked bean convayor belt before they went into the sauce/tinning machine.
( studlywonder, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:42, Reply)

Not very interesting
but I had a job once taking rubbish off a tip and putting it into a skip - to be taken to another tip.


Uh, toodle pip.
( Spunk Murphy Tchaikovsky is a synonym for fanny, apparently, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:40, Reply)

i was the payer..
my friend will eat anything for money

once a banana had been left out all night that had been cut in half and a thick skin formed over the open end. being bored i peeled it off and he ate it...

for 20p

retching ensued

there have been many other incidents of this kind with said friend including involving mouldy apple and custard crumbles, my toenails and live daddy long legs.

sicko
(norman the goat 's got 3 legs, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:37, Reply)

My current job.
I make pornsites. Everyday I get paid to look at porn, and b3ta.
(Spastic Bambi, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:32, Reply)

I have quite a few:
I'll try not to go into detail for many reasons.

My first job was to clean up after surgery in a fairly old school hospital. Scrubbing at a sink etc.

My next job was repairing (mostly telling people why they needed replacements) flexible urethroscopes and hysteroflators.

After that, I typed up reports in a paternity testing lab.

Then I did telemarketing - still the weirdest job out of the lot, and now I manage the buggers.

Oh, and a friend of mine used to work on a sex line where he needed to keep a bucket full of water next to his desk and drop pebbles in there so that it sounded like he was taking a shit.

Also, for any aussies reading, a different friend was responsible for hosing sophie monk down with green slime on a nickolodeon special. Her minder stepped in.
( gronkpan https://twitter.com/VomitingLarry, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:31, Reply)

I got paid
£25 to watch an episode of friends. :)
( Redsushi! Whoop! Whoop! Yes, that one!, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:31, Reply)

i've been paid
to fuck off before, about five quid i think i got.
( Munky Boy today I am back., Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:29, Reply)

Best Job Ever
My friend has contacts in the film industry, and managed to get us parts as extras in "Johnny English" (I'm one of the pages in the coronation scene!).

We got paid £8 an hour, and did 8 days of 10 hours.

£640 for appearing in a mainstream film.

And the best bit was that we only actually worked for 2 days in total... The rest of the time we were playing cards/chatting/getting free cooked lunches in the extras tent, waiting there in case we were needed!!!
(tom_m525, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:27, Reply)

I got paid to snore years ago.
I was 17, and while visiting a mate in hospital there was a sign saying 'Do you snore? Do you want to get paid for it?' You had to come in and sleep in the hospital every night for two weeks, get all hooked up with sensors and things, and get paid £10 a night. In restrospect that's not a very interesting story.
( pxyzyzygy, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:26, Reply)

I was paid quite a lot of money
for licking tomato puree off someone's armpit yesterday.
(The Secret 7000 ...join us. www.secret7000.co.uk, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:25, Reply)

I have just been given the job of going to LA to watch
motor-racing. Which is nice.
( Mr Gear the gay-maker, Thu 30 Sep 2004, 10:21, Reply)