Have you ever been paid for doing something either ridiculously simple or just plain ridiculous? Bets, eating contests, jobs that took literally 10 seconds to complete?
Sometimes it feels like a majority of folks don’t get paid what they deserve for doing hard work, so it’s nice to hear that some really stupid situations yielded bank for a lucky few.
On Reddit, people are sharing the dumbest things they’ve done for money.
And if I had a chicken, I’d totally rent him out to a photographer for $50.
1. Licking Your Elbow
“Waiter said it was impossible to lick your elbow. I informed him I could do it. He bet me $5 I couldn’t do it. I increased my net worth by $5.” — DumpTruckDaddy
2. Sound Engineer For Deaf People
“I did an event for a national association for deaf people at which they did every presentation in ASL. I am an audio engineer, who specializes in live sound and concerts. I did nothing for 5 days of show, $450 a day.” — murter95
3. Renting Your Chicken
“I rented my chicken to a photographer for fifty bucks.” — slhopper
4. Negotiating For Rich People
“Had a WFH gig working sort of as a personal assistant for a rich guy on the opposite coast from me. I did all kinds of wacky shit for him. For example, one time I had to break up with my boss’s girlfriend because he was too wimpy to do it himself. Rly, weird shit like that was literally my job. One day, I bought him a new pickup truck. Meaning, I negotiated the deal and paid for the truck with his credit card. All in all, I’d say the process probably took about two weeks, for which I was paid my usual wage at six hours per day. No big deal. Somehow, his dad found out about the new truck and he decided he wanted a new pickup truck too. He called me about a week after I bought the truck for my boss and said he’d pay me $2,000 to buy a truck for him. I called the same dealership back, spoke to the same salesman, told him what was up and basically said give me another truck, same price as before. The salesman was only too happy to comply. It took ten minutes to make the phone call and then a day or two to get the title and other paperwork sorted out. So, depending on how you look at it, I made $2,000 for just ten minutes worth of ‘work.'” — OhYeahThrowItAway
5. Netflix Study
“$175 to do some kind of user study at Netflix, I show up in the lobby and then they go, ‘actually we got the data we needed from the studies earlier today, you’re free to go.’ Still got paid!” — Lycid
6. Hanging A TV
“Hang a TV. Then make sure that TV worked the following day and then take the TV down the day after. Made $1k.” — Rmanthumbs
7. Resizing Photos
“I used to work for a PR agency. Every month one of our clients wanted a handful of photos re-sized for their website; nothing fancy, just setting the width to 500px in Windows Photo Manager. It was maybe ten minutes of work every month, but the contract said the minimum amount of time we would charge them for was one day – and this was for the full team too, not just me. It must have cost them several hundred pounds every month. I showed the client how to do it several times, and explained that they could save a lot of money doing it themselves. They didn’t seem to mind. In the end I made sure I got it in writing that I’d informed them of their options and let them get on with it.” — TheRainyDaze
8. Cleaning A Guinea Pig Cage
“My friend asked me to clean out his Guinea Pig cage because he couldn’t be bothered that day. In payment he gave me his copy of Zoo Tycoon 2 for PC.” — Bubbly-Crew9697
9. Pretending To Grill
“I was paid to be a kind of server for a fancy outdoor dinner party, they wanted me to go around with a plate of drinks and food and offer it to people. When I get there they tell me the person they hired to cook on the grill never showed so they wanted me to make that my priority – but I told them I didn’t know how to grill anything (I was 17). The woman told me to look helpless and some man would come do it, ‘every man thinks he’s the grill master and wants to show off.’ So I did…and it worked. I basically got paid to stand next to this guy and thank him every so often, and get him drinks. I got paid over $100 for just a few hours, it was pretty awesome.” — ambereatsbugs
10. Standing Around Playing On The Phone
“I got asked to do 2 hours of barrier watch (Guarding a barrier ribbon while a crew did x rays inside a power plant). This was asked last minute after a 12 hour shift so the bonuses of staying happening to be a Sunday, etc I was being paid $110 to stand and play on my phone and make sure sure nobody tried to pass all the DO NOT ENTER DANGER DANGER signs during a time of day with minimal personnel.” — Hotel29