One July 4th
the owner of the restaurant where I worked paid me and his very cute son to go to the fireworks and hand out flyers. We stuck them on people's cars or something, then went and watched the fireworks and drank beer on my parents' boat. Last year we were married and now have a lovely baby boy aged six months.

In the old days, before I was a parent, I had four different jobs where I was allowed to smoke pot and watch TV (radio station, video stores, answering service); at one they even encouraged me to invite friends in as it was the night shift and I was alone in a bad part of town.
(Hannah_Fruit, Tue 5 Oct 2004, 19:14, Reply)

Cleaning
I used to clean at the local pub before it closed down and being sweet 16 at the time and never actually having much experience of cleaning or pubs (honest!)I was shocked at the disgusting mess people could make. Worst offenders were men who threw up in the urinals, which were the trough type not the sink type and had to be flushed manually which wasn't ever done, crapped in the urinals and then threw fag ends on the top as decoration. Men also cannot flush loos as I found out regulary when lifting up loo seats and finding 'presents'. All this for £13 a week ..... least I bettered myself with my next part time job £2.85 an hour at the local theme park serving up chicken burgers to every chav in a 50 mile radius..... slave bloody labour if ya ask me!!!!
(NotSaying lurking is fun, Tue 5 Oct 2004, 15:15, Reply)

Burgers, anyone?
I was 14. It was winter. I needed a Saturday job, and my local Wimpy were hiring. 8 hours work, I had to shout orders at the cook (really handy for a shy 14 year old who wouldn't say boo to a goose...) for a while, then they put me out into the shopping centre dressed as Mr Wimpy. The costume stank, I couldn't wear a coat underneath it, and I froze. I did that all bloody day without a single break, then burst into tears when my Dad came to pick me up. He stormed back into the Wimpy, shouted at the manager, and told him I wouldn't be returning. Then he promised to match what they were paying me as pocket money until I got another job. Then he made (hah!) me eat the nice gooey cake he'd just bought himself from Marks and Spencer cos I was bloody starving. I'd not been allowed so much as a mouthful of a drink since breakfast.

My Dad rocks.
(krytenk, Tue 5 Oct 2004, 14:56, Reply)

it's not all beer and bus drivers you know
14 years old and earning money for some damn thing or other i can no longer remember, but dad got me a job in his local boozer filling the beer flagons (1/2 gallon jars) (this was eons ago), and after awhile became quite good at avoiding the huge sprays of freezing cold beer if the jar was too hot, meaning the fucker exploded.
in the end, i was working late at night and had carefully got no backspray at all until the last set of five come on, and three went at once. not a happy camper.
here i was 14, covered, and i mean covered in beer as i stepped onto the bus to take me home. and the bastard driver wouldn't let me on for childs fare either cos he reckoned if i was old enough to drink piss (badly) i was old enough to pay full fare.

I must have got the money i was working so hard for as i remember being there still when school started back couple months later.
(fushundchups taste better with vinegar, Tue 5 Oct 2004, 13:03, Reply)

Money for shit
I was recently paid $100 cash-under-the-table to change an exploded colostomy bag on someone who had just died.

It wasn't the easiest $100 I'd ever made.
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Tue 5 Oct 2004, 13:03, Reply)

magictorch i worked there!
I spent a summer working in that hospital food place. I was 'modified textures dept.' Yummy. Basically, get a liver/onion cassorole or chicken chasseur or some such. Add real food to blender = brown slop. Add vegetables to blender = orange or green slop. Most meals centred round mashed (slopped) potato.

Spent alot of time pissing about, joking about the people with no teeth who had to eat this shit, until my boss took me to one side and asked if i was aware that it was for stroke victims.... Straight to hell.

I was terrified that i would end up in hospital for several weeks after, having to eat this stuff.

It was very very cold, i got an ear infection. All for £4.50/hr.

Yay for posting virginity :)
(Oddie, Tue 5 Oct 2004, 11:36, Reply)

two
I got paid to sit around watching TV and downloading MP3s all night with a buzzer on the wall. If the buzzer went off, it meant there was someone in the yard outside, and my job was to sound a coronary-inducing siren into the yard and aim a massive spotlight, which I swear must've been robbed from a police helicopter, straight at the scallies until they legged it. We even managed to get hold of a few more of these spotlights, and rig them up to some old nightclub lighting kit, so this previously pitch-black yard was suddenly floodlit in massive sweeping prison-escape style spotlights, with me holding one spotlight aiming straight at the pikey cunts.

They didn't half shift when that happened!


At the moment, I get paid to sit around on my arse all day doing absolutely shite all. And I didn't even have to get a PhD either.
(bblgoose, Mon 4 Oct 2004, 17:59, Reply)

Delurking commenced.....
We have De-Lurkage. I was paid £2.50 an hour to litter pick on a landfill site.

Yeah, thats what I thought. You'd go along picking up every bit of shit along the way, just to look behind you to see that several more bits of shit had blown over the area you just cleaned.

I've also been paid to put my fingers up peoples arses and clean out the poo...true. The joys of being a nurse I suppose. I noted the previous nursey replies and would like to add my own.

Teaching new Mum's to breast feed (not as much fun as one might imagine).

Changing dressings on kids who have "open abdomens" following transplant.

Using "Methylated Blue" to see if people have holes in them, which also turns your piss green/blue (my learned colleague before mentioned the Rifampacin, which does indeed turn ALL body fluids orange).

If we unfortunately have a baby die, we carry them down to the mourge swaddled in a blanket. I've had a few sticky situations in lifts..."He's very quiet isnt he!"

I have others but they upset me.

Relurk engine engaged...Relurk attained
( Beejay Proper old bastard, Mon 4 Oct 2004, 16:41, Reply)

pass the parcel
I invited myself to a party recently (my friends don't have them anymore and I was bored), and the host had set up several party games. One of these was 'pass the parcel' (didja guess?) with various dares inside it. I was in charge of stopping the music for said game. One young party attendee offered to pay me to make sure it stopped every time on his friend, to which I happily agreed. His friend overheard and offered to pay me more to make it not stop on him. A bidding war quickly escalated, with me insisting on cash up front. easiest £50 I ever made!
(crayongirl, Mon 4 Oct 2004, 15:03, Reply)

and talking of grunters
once or twice i was forced to collect piggy poo out of a huge lagoon containing piggy poo for sampling purposes to assess whether it could be spread on the land....

this involved a lovely leisurely dinghy ride out in to the middle of said lagoon with a (fairly pointless) set of "safety" clothing on.

samples of both the solids & liquids, or in technical parlance, shit & piss, were required. for this I was paid the princely sum of less than £13k per annum pro rata with no allowance for holidays or sickness.

well done me.
(davidblunkettsdogblankets, Mon 4 Oct 2004, 14:23, Reply)

Grunters
I once got paid to serve pizzas in a pig themed restaurant called 'Grunters' dressed in a pig costume. When people ordered we had to go oink oink. They served the worst pizza ever invented called the sow pie (get it) It had snails on it and an egg fried in pernod.
(Dannyo, Mon 4 Oct 2004, 12:22, Reply)

umbrella checker
i had a job for several months while trying to get some wonga together for an airfare. The company imported umbrellas from china with promotional bullshit on them, like piles cream ads to give away to doctors. But they'd had a few reports that some were faulty. For around 12 weeks, I sat alone in a warehouse next to an regularly replenishing pile of blue umbrellas. I'd pull one out of its plastic sheath, open it out, and twirl it around under the skylight. I'd then have to resheath it elephant-condom style, and chuck it on the 'good' pile. I hardly found one hole, and ended up not even bothering to look, but I'd always threw a few on the 'bad' pile each day to make it look like I was diligent.
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Mon 4 Oct 2004, 11:10, Reply)

i was once paid to take part in a scientific test
no biggy, my mate was doing it and i'd just started uni, so i could do with the money. it was to do with sleep deprevation, not bad, i'm used to sitting up until the early hours, so i though it would be money for old rope. My mate who got me involved slowy revealed details about it as the time got nearer.

1. it was taking place over 3 seperate 2 week periods, one in december, one in january and one in february, then we'd get paid at the end. not bad i thought, could have done with the money before christmas, but will survive.

2.as well as the spit samples we had to do every hour, we also had to do piss samples, fine i thought, i'm sure i could stretch to that.

3. we also needed to monitor our body temperature, fine i thought, until my mate told me that the mouth wasn't reliable enough to take a core body reading from. i asked him if i had to stick a thermometer up my arse every hour, to which her replied, "no, you'll be wearing a flexible probe, 24/7". the probe had a diameter of about 3mm, but made you feel like you had a shit half out of your arse.

needless to say, when february came we got our cheques (£450) and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the pub sinking pint after pint of cafferys with some other friends. we were very, very drunk by the time we left.
( Thor_sonofodin has done things, terrible things on, Mon 4 Oct 2004, 10:29, Reply)

Industrial spy
I have a friend who use to work in such a position in the UK. Now because she was meant to be working in France, she paid a guy to answer the phoney company's phone in France and transfer them to her London office. She Usually had about 2 calls a week, however this guy worked full time, just in case.
(albator, Mon 4 Oct 2004, 10:10, Reply)

Monkey Fishing
The basement of a nameless university had several large skips full of assorted monkey body parts, scavenged from various zoos over the years, preserved lovingly in alcohol/water mix. Like olives, only more like fetid monkey soup with chunks.
Seemingly, these had been thrown in, without any thought for proper cataloguing. How careless.

Enter me, with shoulder length rubber gloves, and, a gasmask, sorry "industrial respirator". We had to go in pairs, in case someone fell in and drowned. Gave up on the respirators in the first five minutes because they were too bulky.

Fish around up to your shoulder in monkey soup, pull out a body part, and guess what it is - attach a tag with a staple gun, and stick it back in. What's this in the bucket? Oh, it's a binbag. Do you want to open the binbag, boys and girls? No? Well, I'll do it then. Oh look. It's a dismembered chimpanzee. That or we've found Jeff Dahmer's secret stash.

Best of all, after about half an hour, the alcohol fumes get you drunk as a lord. Great, until you remember you're drunk on monkey fumes.

What is that, Dr von Strome? You need me in the lab-or-a-tory? Helga will be happy to oblige.

You'll be glad to know there were no lasting after-effects.
(sags tupac-a-hats, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 23:58, Reply)

Creepy crafty idea
Not me, but my daughter. She does not like spiders, but will do almost anything for money. So, whenever we get a giant spider in the house, we agree on a sliding scale of payment - the bigger the spider, the bigger the payment, and she kills it and flushes the body. The biggest one so far has been a £10 spider - it was as big as a cd.
(grangeb77 bored of sigs. boom zig, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 23:48, Reply)

Goat tugger
Yes, oh lord it are true - when I was a teenager living in some back-end-of-nowhere village, I was offered a job looking after my mum's friend's pets. Goat pets. Two of the bleeders.

They don't just need feeding and poo pickup - no, they need milking too. When I was being "shown the ropes" I was told how to milk off the bleating gits. Just like milking a cow they said. OOH OKAY!

It was like placing my hand around a hot hairy (and SILKY hairs at that) man's part. I tried to milk - and nothing. I quit the same day. Okay I didn't get paid but still - shudder.

Goat milking - it's for the birds. Or better still, baby goats.
( Squeaky Shoes *riao riao*, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 23:31, Reply)

Working for an insurance company,
I came across someone whose job was listed as "Guillotine Operator". Sounds fun.
( Detrius521, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 20:56, Reply)

Strange jobs- does this qualify?
A few years ago me and about 2 friends decided to do what we assumed would be mostly sitting around, talking, and eating free food, interspersed with the occasional unexpected swim. Yes, world, we worked the school fair dunk tank shift. A nearby high school had a Fall Fair where they had the ususal cheap games etc. and they paid 15 dollars an hour to work at the dunk tank. Yes, this was in the USA. Well, we showed up for work, and were promptly told we would work the morning shift. On it being my turn, I got up on the little bench thing using a slippery ladder (bad sign number 1) wearing a rather... erm... small swimsuit, if you get my drift. Read a book... it's really cold in Wisconsin in the fall. know that? Aside from the bad aims, the general chattings-up and the temperature, the worst time was the only time I actually got dunked. By one of my off-duty friends. She paid up, took aim and threw- there is NO scarier sight than a freezing tank of water, complete with wrappers and beercans rushing towards your skimpily clad ass. No explanation needed. I dried off, but my friends did manage to pay for thai food and beer for poor ol' me.
(ZooLurker is an angry chick with a mullet!, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 19:45, Reply)

Transporting The Dead
In 1980, I took a job as a Fire/Medic in a rural county in North Florida.
The place was lacking in police coverage and had become a handy sport to do murder and get away with it. Not wanting to hold this honor, the local government decided to enter the modern age. To this end, they got rid of the 'Old Boy' Sheriff, a chap called Dudley, and upgraded the whole department so even the lonely areas would be patrolled. Then they hired a Coroner to dissect and investigate murder most foul. What they did not do was provide a way to get the victims to the morgue. In the past this had been done by a man named "Kenny from Jax", a fellow rumored to like his job a little too much, who would drive in from and haul the corpses off to a nearby county where things were more organized.
Now, please don't think that there were 100s of dead lying about bloating in the tropic sun; more like one or two per week and that would include all death unsupported by a physician's certificate i.e. car crash, sudden death, foul play and so on.
Well we at the fire house sussed the situation and offered to do the job on an on call basis for $50 per body, no group discount and the money would come from a 'General Fund' with no tax taken.
Needless to say we made a killing, but looking back on those days, I see how really strange it was.
For instance, the police were jealous that the fire service had got this going, so while they had no trouble calling you out to a horrible accident scene, they refused to help you get your 'client'(s) from the mangled wrecks. Also, during the 'warm times' a person's body might only be discovered due to scent. To get by this, we developed various ploys, including spreading "Vick's" in an oxygen mask, stuffing wintergreen snuff packets up your nose, smoking big smelly cigars or a combination of the above. We were young and crazy and we had drugs. Things got more and more the Cowboy Way, until our antics caught the attention of the press and the County Fathers shut our operation down.
I am retired from that sort of work now, but not too long ago I saw a rather tarted up van wearing lights and sirens and the words Assistant County Coroner emblazoned on the side. As I passed, a huge black man wearing a very fancy uniform emerged. I took a second look to be sure. It was none other than the imfamous necrophile "Kenny From JAX" come to reclaim his link in the chain of foolishness we had made all those years ago. Luck to you Kenny!
(texino, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 19:16, Reply)

You know those chocolate trifles-in-a-tub,
well I was the guy who put the "cookies" in, that soak up the moose and turn into the sponge layer.
They tasted great.
(CrazyDave, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 14:07, Reply)

While working in a nightclub
The mens toilets flooded and had to be closed. I was put in charge of stopping drunk men whipping out their bits and peeing up the walls by the cloakroom.

The amount of times I heard "Ah go on love, you don't mind if I just..." that night was phenomenal.
( Miss Behave - Delicate little flower, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 12:56, Reply)

On my paper round...
It was a normal day and i'd nearly delivered them all, when this guy came upto me and asked me to deliver a dead badger (no joke) to his 'mates' house. He gave me a tenner to do it. It was quite sick cos i was on my bike and whenever i looked around i kept seeing some legs sticking out my bag.
(Corrupt, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 10:53, Reply)

i was paid
to call a bloke called Tony, putting on an Arab accent and say that the Weekly Monetary Discussion's could be ready in 45 minutes.

No idea why.

Got £30 for it though
(monkeyseemonkeydo, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 2:52, Reply)

Male Stripper Roadie
I was a roadie for a rip-off Chippendales band called Adonis, me and 2 other weedy students lugging their trunks around for a couple of nights, openly laughing at their trousers... you know, the ones that would just fall off if you farted whilst wearing them. We only just managed to keep a straight face when they asked us if we wanted to hang around and watch the show instead of going to the pub and coming back when it was all over.

The strangest bit was when we had to shift their fake Greek pillars - they were light enough for one person to carry them, but they were quite big so you had to have your face at about groin-height on the pillars. And they stank to high heaven.
( magicbaboon, Sun 3 Oct 2004, 1:56, Reply)

jobs you wouldn't imagine exsisted...
12-hour night shifts in summer in a salad factory, standing (too cold in factory to legally be allowed to sit) by a conveyor belt squeezing plastic bags of salad to check the seal.
And theen, 12 hour nightshifts in a soft drink factory in Yorkshire, next to the machine that cooks the paint on the cans. My job was to play 'go fish' with a small crowbar to make sure the cans went in upright. Also involved chemically cleaning a printing machine. No experience necessary! Left because the yorkshire chavman-filled factory was a frightening place for an 20yo blonde to be at night.
Also worked in a paper-printing factory, pushing cutouts from the spare paper. Bloody hands resulted. Gloves (reluctantly) given to us on the 3rd day, to cover our bloody stumps. Wouldn't want to get body fluids on the latest mortgage offer for NatWest now would we...
Sheet-folding for the local hospital. Favourite game? (scuse crossover post, know this has bindun) Guess the stain! (blood, more blood, shit, dunno, looks like a stomach-pumping session, blood etc.) The dirty laundry section was worse, colostomy bags and syringes wrapped in sheets. Am now immune to electric shocks.
Then, tailor, putting zips in trousers belonging to old men. Usually with inbuilt stains. And the stuff tha comes out when you pull a zip out...you don't want to even guess. Severe 'Filth'-style excema can be the only explination.
Bestest one...
At a make-up factory, in dire need of new machinery. We put the eyeliner bottle together by hand, first you fill it with a tiny little vacuum filler, then bash on the plug, screw on the lid, apply barcode (a finer art than you could ever imagine) and stick it through the daycoder. Do you not get the impression that a little more care on the sterility front would have been taken? Shit no. Oh, and if you were lucky you got to play on the big machines on the brushers (guess what they do...that's right...they put the brushes on!) which was great because no-one could hear you over the Metropolis-style machine and you were on a high chair. So all shift you could play captn startrek, complete with soundtrack and mechanical crises. "What seems to be the problem, Dave the Engineer?" "Ah no captn, she willnae brush no more, we gotta brush stuck in the anus of the machine, the dilithium crystals are shot to shit!!" etc. etc. This caught on as soon as people realised I was harmless and not convinced of my status as captain, (they wanted a go) so everyone on the machine got to play. Huzzah! Another favourite, "Death of Brian" (shopping list style, you have to remember all the alphabetical deaths before your letter), the factory idiot. Potential causer of many a lawsuit, but had been there since 1841 so firing him was more trouble than just letting him retire, but making sure there was always a fire-extinguisher handy.
In every job that must be done there is an element of fun...except mine.
Glad you liked the q btw ;)
(spida, Sat 2 Oct 2004, 23:38, Reply)

I wasn't paid to do it, per se, but it was still strange
my friend missed a stage-makeup test in his acting class, and he bribed me with the promise of lunch to let him do stage makeup on me.

how bad it could be? i thought.

he had to make me look like an old lady, complete with wrinkles and grey hair.
the only foundation(?) he had was orange.

the icing on the proverbial cake was being paraded around the school while he looked for his drama teacher.

i was met with many stares and several "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO YOURSELF"s.



but i got a burrito out of it.




i was also persuaded to join my school's "spirit squad" when i was 14 (what can i say...i like to help people). i worked in the school office at the time, and one of the secretaries was in charge of it. she gave me the "we'll have to cancel as we have too few members" sob story, and i gave in.

she promised me it wasn't cheerleading, but when i came to the first meeting it was quite obviously clear that it was. i told her there was no way i would ever cheer so she said "fine. you're the mascot."

you'd think i'd be rememebered at that school for my excellent grades, or when i won outstanding acheivement in choir.

but no...
i'm the fucking ex-school-mascot.






at least i still have my dignity.
(sponch!, Sat 2 Oct 2004, 20:29, Reply)

I was once ...
payed a fiver to meow every minute of a fifty minute lesson. Twas lucky we had one of the stupidest teachers ever, as she kept sending random people out for it heheehehehhehe
(The Magical Mr Q *is now banishing kittens*, Sat 2 Oct 2004, 11:50, Reply)

Nope,I'm happy to say!

(That guy with a hat., Sat 2 Oct 2004, 10:40, Reply)