Now, this could refer to either jobs you’ve held or other strange things you’ve done that earned you a buck or two, like surveys, college psychology experiments, etc.
Last summer, I participated in a “moist toilet tissue” survey. I’m on some internet survey lists that send me surveys from time to time. One of them was about “moist toilet tissue” (think baby wipes, only for adults.) Well, I wasn’t completely adverse to the idea, so I got an offer to try some moist toilet tissue in my home and report on the ahem results. For my trouble, I would receive $20. My husband was aghast that I would even consider such a thing–as far as he was concerned, dry TP was the only way to go. However, I tried the two brands out and reported…one of the brands was not as, well, gentle as the other. Oh, and my husband determined that they weren’t all bad–they come in handy after certain…intimate activities. For fighting this moist toilet tissue ignorance, I did indeed receive a check for $20.
Jumped in an unheated pool in winter wearing all my clothes for $5 (bet from my sister)
Sorted metal scrap into piles by metal type while having to remove dead squished animals (mostly rats) at a metal foundry to make extra money in high school.
Job wise, I once shoveled a six inch layer of pigeon crap and dead pigeons off the roof of a hotel. Note to pigeons, do not drink the water in the cooling towers, it’s not good for you.
I once sold the bandana I was wearing (six hours into a kitchen shift during summer and I can break a sweat while changing a lightbulb, definitely not something most people would want) to a drunk guy for $5.00. He thought it looked neat.
When I was a grad student at Indiana U I “became a Kinsey statistic.” For some survey investigating the effects of a particular new birth control pill on sex drive, every few weeks I would go in and talk to this researcher and answer VERY sensitive questions ("so what percentage of the time would you say you orgasm? Who orgasms first? How often have you masturbated this week? How many times a day do you think about sex? etc.).
Then of course for the next 2 years I’d run into her all the time at art openings, restaurants, etc.
I was the first female participant in a study in which they were looking at how alcohol is metabolized. They determined the amount of alcohol you got by your weight. The problem was that at the time I was a large woman who really didn’t drink much, so the two stadium cups they gave me of vodka and sprite (that I had to drink in 20 minutes at 8 in the morning) got me drunk very quickly. They breathalized me and the next thing I knew, I was suddenly awake and throwing up. Oops. After that, they couldn’t use my data, but I still got my $50.
A year or two later, a friend of mine was a statistician doing a reanalysis of the data. He looked up my results and there I was: F001–vomited. Ah, immortality.
I got $15 by participating in a survey/questionnaire. I think it had to do with the way your mind reacts when told that it has done something wrong (when it thinks you’ve done well).
I also (regularly) give plasma for money, getting as much as $50 (woohoo!) per week.
Wow… I should look into giving Plasma. I need the money.
Strangest thing I did…
I once, on a dare, zip-tied my scrotom for $11. I also applied Duct tape to my inner thigh for $5 earlier that week.
Oddly enough, this was around the first time I posted to the SD, and my first thread that I originated had to do with that… “should I drink my own urine for money?”
When i was 18* and a freshman in college, i participated in an experiment designed to test the effect of alcohol and prescription drugs on reflexes and hand-eye coordination.
When we first arrived at the lab, we would take a series of computer games and tests, and the results would be recorded. Then we were given some vodka and/or valium (depending on the test), and had to retake the computer stuff every hour for five hours. I think that sometimes i was given placebos instead of alcohol or valium, because there were definitely days when the stuff really had no effect. I assume this was a sort of “control,” a baseline against which to measure the real results. I did this every Monday for a couple of months, and i seem to remember that it paid pretty well.
hey, I once tried to participate in one of those “get drunk for money” surveys. They didn’t take me b/c they said I drink too much
On the opposite end of the spectrum, one night a friend announced, “Who will pay me a dollar to urinate on my roommate’s bed”. I volunteered a dollar of my own. I’m sure he counts that among his most interesting ways to make money.
How exactly does one go about giving plasma for money? It was suggested to me in another thread, and it’s something I never considered. I’m starting to get curious.
Nothing quite as interesting as some of these, but I’ve had a few odd temp jobs, one of which was at a company that stored and handled legal documents from medical malpractice cases. For several weeks, my job consisted of reading trial transcripts from lawsuits against a manufacturer of inflatable penile implants. These used to be the standard treatment for impotence, and let’s just say that Viagra was a much-needed advance in medical science. The problems ranged from horrific (tubing coming out during sex) to merely embarrassing (spontaneous inflation in public places … and I should explain that the only way to deflate the device is to reach into your pants and hold on to it).
I participated in a medical trial for some sort of astmha drug. $800 or so plus three hot meals a day for two days sitting around with a needle in my arm wasn’t bad for a poor student nearly 20 years ago.
I was hanging out with some friends on the main drag in the town I used to live in, back when I was a teenager, and some people came up and offered me $10 to ride in the backseat of their car when they went to pick up some girl, and they would tell her I was a hitchhiker they picked up, after which I was supposed to mention having been in prison and generally try to creep the girl out.
I worked as a driver for a friend of mine who was a prostitute. When you’re a uni student and have rent to pay, anything seems possible. I only earned $20 a call (and had to hang around while my friend was inside doing her business), but three calls a week equalled my rent.
Another thing, more recently, was going in a medical trial for birth control patches (think the pill meets nicabate). I just want to say, clearly, no, we were not testing to see if they worked or not. Mostly it was just wearing the patch (constantly, for 6 months), reporting any side effects (i got a skin allergy and have mild scarring where the patch was placed), and having three blood tests a week to make sure that the drug was reaching an effective concentration in the body.
The silliest thing I can remember is when I was at an ice cream place with some friends, and I got two scoops of chocolate. Since I was quite enjoying it, and also wearing it all over my face, someone told me to just thrust it into my forhead. He put up some money, and others joined in, and I ended up getting $2.50 for getting ice cream all over my face. Best of all, it covered the cost of the ice cream!
I sculpted butts for several hundred dollars. About 20-50 of them (I can’t remember the exact number.) I remember sitting on my bed, watching TV, with a tray of clay butts lining up as I kept on making more and more and more clay butts.
I used to work for this lady who had a lot of “creative side projects”. I did a lot of illustration and creative work for her projects, mainly involving butts. No kidding. First there were the “butt dolls”, which were these cute “cabbage patch” type stuffed mini doll-type things. The front of the “butt doll” (my term) would be the cute little doll face, surrounded by a lace “collar”. The backside of the butt doll would be a butt—cute little rounded cheeks and a crack. No arms or legs. Just a face and a butt. I did all the illustrations for the butt doll catalog.
She then was encouraged to start making butt refrigerator magnets. Just the butt (two round cheeks and a crack). They’d be made from a mold and painted flesh color. I made the model for the original butt. She asked me to make a LOT of butts, so she could pick out the best one. So I did. Butt after butt after butt. It’s been many years later, and I can still remember all those butts. The cheeks, the crack, the little dimples above the cheeks. Yep. Those damned butts are engraved in my mind forever.
I guess they sold well enough. She had them made in Taiwan. She was told by a business associate that she needed someone stateside (me) to design the butts, because the people in Taiwan didn’t have the same kind of cute dimpled butts that we are thinking of. (So she was told. Go figure. She didn’t ask her business associate how he knew that about all of Taiwan’s butts.)
It’s been long enough so I can’t remember the lady’s name off the top of my head. I always referred to her (to my family and such) as “The Butt Doll Lady”. She was a really nice lady, and always paid well, and promptly.
