What I do now.
I write for a living. It's great! I never have to leave home except for posting invoices, banking cheques, visits to the off license and Tesco, and to obtain shall we say "inspirational" substances. I can stay in bed all day with the laptop, dabbing, smoking, drinking, and writing. At least twice a month I stay up all night and laugh myself silly at breakfast time when I hear the sound of the suburban slave class powering up their overpriced pointlessly powerful BMW wankermobiles to go and sit in traffic behind giant twatmobiles containing ONE CHILD in each.

Could life get any stranger?
(the_hammerhead_tart -- In love with a strict machine, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 15:26, Reply)

I was paid a tenner....
..... to sit in the mess room of Penryn Police Station drinking tea and eating biscuits for an hour. I was there to be in an identity parade, but the suspect didn't turn up.
(Scary, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 15:17, Reply)

Broken glass?
I work for a scientific suplly company and every now and then Im forced to rake through boxes of broken glass test tubes to find the 4 or 5 out of 500 that are still intact.. great fun.
(Vicatron, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 15:13, Reply)

Safety Deposit Boxes
A few years back, I was paid to act as an independent witness for a bank, opening thousands of long-unchecked safety deposit boxes. Lots of old banknotes, gaudy jewellry, and mad handwritten rantings about how to save the world. The odd rusty gun. Quite sad in parts. Oh yeah, and there were two or three very suspicious fungus-covered objects, which led the bank to call the police. They turned out to be "organic matter". Not sure what that's supposed to mean...
(ptet is happy, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 14:35, Reply)

Strange job
once got paid for 11 hours work of sitting in a truck cab making sure nobody knicked it reading the viz Profanisaurus best of all it was a bank holiday so they paid me double time

also managed to work as a reworker for 4 months before sombody noticed all i did was make the chips to be soldered super cold with the cold spray and whack them wit a spanner and who said lying on ur CV is a bad thing
(j3fus, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 14:14, Reply)

F3ral
I work for the company who supplied the borough of tower hamlets with most of their software. Glad we could be of slacking assistance.

It's not much better internally either.
(he who walks, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 14:13, Reply)

Chicken lifting
Like Peelmytangerines I have also workied on a Kibbutz. I did not have to kill chickens, when they were ready for harvesting or whatever the word is, just pick them up by their legs (3 chickens in left hand, 2 in right hand) and dump them into cages on the back of trucks. In the middle of the night in the dark so they were sleepy.
(he who walks, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 14:10, Reply)

photos
I got paid to do a stock take at an images agency. Took three of us a week 8 hbours a day to count thousands of photo negatives.

I still get nightmares
(coz, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 13:51, Reply)

I was paid to
Watch tv and dvd's in a bulders hut over 12-16 hour shifts 6 days a week wearing a jacket labled security.
(DJTheBaron, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 13:49, Reply)

by the way
i went to university college suffolk.

in ipswich

(shudders)
(magictorch, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 13:44, Reply)

and finally - near ipswich
in colchester - there is a large industrial kitchen which prepares pre cooked meals for most of the hospitals in the south east.

myself and a bunch of remedials from southern suffolk cleaned this lovely establishment for top to bottom one hot summers day.

i found another scarring agent - industrial oven cleaner.

not really a strange job, but god help me if im ever hospitalised in london and i have to eat any food there.

we measured the gak we cleaned from the inside of the oven hoods in inches.
(magictorch, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 13:42, Reply)

wheat merchants (again near ipswich)
I would jump from a specially constructed platform onto the top of lorries full of rape seed, wheat or barley while they waited on a weigh bridge, plunge a 'spear' to the bottom of the load which extracted a sample for moisture content, and then take a top sample, which i would check for ickle evil grainbugs.

the bastards didnt tell me barley dust is like fibreglass. in summer heat, up to your ankles in barley, while sweating, it sticks to you and causes horrible itching.

and scars.

the bastards.
(magictorch, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 13:39, Reply)

litter picking in a landfill site.
an open site near ipswich had issues with litter blowing into the edges of the site and nearby fields, which i was paid to bag in bin liners, and then take back to the middle of the site again.

needless to say, it was an open and very windy place full of rubbish.

pointless.

i spent three days playing tin can golf with the litter pickers we were given, and i smelt of decaying fermenting bananas for a week.
(magictorch, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 13:27, Reply)

This is part of my dayjob.
Part of my roles and responsibilities is to certify that vehicles used for crash testing are fully functional as far as signals from airbag/ABS/traction control systems go. That is not so daft in itself. BUT! to save money, the same vehicle will becrashed backwards, forwards and rolled over. So after the first crash, I have to fix all the broken electronic on-board systems....so they can crash it again...then I have to fix them again....so they can crash it again again.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Fri 1 Oct 2004, 13:26, Reply)

I used to know a guy
who got paid to roll down a hill. Apparently it was an art installation and he had to encourage other people to do the same. He said they had to take breaks every fifteen minutes for health and safety reasons.
( mrlogic is copying your beard, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 13:21, Reply)

I once got paid for eating salt! Sort off...
First year, high school, we were fucking bored! My "mate" (the twat) said he would pay me to down a packet of salt. I (stupidly) agreed, and ate the packet of salt. Oh dear. My throat was very very dry, the salt tasted of shit, and the twat wouldn't pay me! He wouldn't even give me a swig of his drink (the twat). So the whole of that lunch was spent wandering around school looking for a drink. (The twat).

Fin.
(Keiths Dad, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 13:06, Reply)

I get paid
to sit around in a cathedral sleeping and kick out anyone who comes in looking for somewhere to sleep

All of this with zero tax
(kupsta, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 12:58, Reply)

At Southampton University
they had a thing called the Institute of Vibration Research. They once gave me a fiver to sit on a chair inside a tall barrel shaped thing, which was painted inside with thick black and white stripes, like a humbug. Then, they span the barrel around faster and faster until I felt sick, at which point, you banged on the barel and they let you out through a little door.

You were then given your five quid and shown to the bog.

Something to do with motion sickness I think..
( expf, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 12:58, Reply)

I've had 2 weird jobs
I was paid to screen calls and take appointements for a call girl.

I did voice over work for porn movies in France.
(albator, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 12:48, Reply)

Moonpig
My poor friend Moonpig was moping about the college canteen as he did not have the bus fair to get home.
"Can anyone lend me ten pence?" he cried. "I'm sure we can" I replied, "But you must earn it."
For a grand total of around 13p, a battery, half a cigarette and some fluff we made the Moonpig snort a line of salt from the canteen table.
He spent the afternoon dribbling snot, tears, and saliva everwhere and twitching.
Worth every penny.
(castro, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 12:39, Reply)

I currently
get paid to doodle, watch tv (for inspiration, honest) and come up with silly ideas.

I spend the day wandering around, drawing pictures on whiteboards and generally chat rubbish with my fellow "writer".

All in the name of television...

; )
( icezebra *insert large monkey*, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 12:23, Reply)

niceandwarmandhot
I want that Foreign Office job! :D
(fuckitall out of here, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 11:27, Reply)

My young cousin used be a bit of a charver,
He used to come round my house every friday night and ask me to buy booze for him and his scummy mates so that they could get hammered in the local park.

Every week they used to give me more and more money to buy them a decent variety of alcoholic delights, word had soon got round that he had a cousin that would help the local chavers get booze on a friday.

Soon I was the Mr Big in Dunston for buying the chavers booze and I could start to up my cut of the deal from 20 marlboro lights to 40 marlboro lights and £20, and eventually £40.

Quite a good deal really, which came to an end when one of his mates grew some chin pubes and could get served himself, after about 6 months.
(Mr Neil, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 11:27, Reply)

I used to (believe it or not) get paid . . .
for this twunty bollox
( Zank Frappa Who let the lefties in?, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 11:23, Reply)

grass heads
got paid to make these stupid things in israel back before they'd arrived in the uk. Horrible things made from shitty hoisery material, then fill it with sand/earth mixture, add grass seed and tie off. Finish by adding mr potato head like features including tache and glasses.

We got bored doing this so got stoned, nicked a few shippers worth and then proceeded to sell them by stopping traffic and shouting Buy a grasshead!!

probably my most enjoyable job actually
(haffy, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 11:19, Reply)

Muff Lighter (sadly, not me)
My mate Helen went to Uni in Farnham with a bunch of Animation students.

One of them - Andy - digressed from this path after graduation and got a job at a London Porn studio.

His job? Muff lighter. Keep the spotlight trained on the 'action' throughout. Hurrah.

His persistence (and aim) paid off - he's now a second cameraman apparently. With a minor speaky role in a film called 'From Dusk Till Porn'. Ha.
( B00gle-H00ps Looks like a horse, in a man costume..., Fri 1 Oct 2004, 11:15, Reply)

i did the music for a karma sutra video once.

( Tiggy Twitchin', Fri 1 Oct 2004, 10:43, Reply)

RATHUNTER
I once got paid to shoot rats with a air rifle in grain silos.

they cant put poisen down, cuz it might get in the grain and end up in ur hovis. Plus the owner thought humain traps wernt humain.

so they gave me an air rifle to hunt rats with.

slight ploblem was, i think the lead shot was a bad idea. hmmmmmmmmm broken teeth and lead poisening
(JLB8, Fri 1 Oct 2004, 10:20, Reply)