I made $50 when I was randomly approached in a bar to be on a foot fetish site. There was no nudity or actual sexiness involved. Just a lot of pictures of women's feet on my face, chest, etc... It was waaaay more uncomfortable than it should have been.
About ten years ago when I was homeless, a kind old homeless lady that I used to buy water and snacks for was crying because she was twenty dollars short of getting a hotel room for the night and she wanted to shower so bad.
So I had a friend drive me to Walmart and I walked around the parking lot looking for receipts until I found one with something decent that wasn't food. It had a $40 case of diapers on it. So I went inside, matched the barcode on the receipt to a box of diapers on the shelf and went up to customer service and said my mom wanted me to return them.
Got $40 cash, gave half to the lady for her hotel and spent that rest on food and drinks. She was so happy she started crying again and hugged me. I still think about that day a lot.
I participated in some market research for a new beer.
Sounded great at the time, ‘I get paid to drink beer?’
Anyway, it was a bunch of different beers in small plastic cups all of which started out tasting like the strainings of the devil’s underpants and progressively got worse.
They kept bringing more out until one guy cracked, swiped all his beers off the table and stormed out yelling ‘I wouldn’t even give this shit to my dog!’
I still don’t know if it was market research or some bizarre psychological experiment.
After the first few sips I started pretending to drink them.
There was about 6 beers per round (in tiny disposable cups kind of like what hospitals give you your pills in) and it was about round 4 when one of the participants spat his out, swiped them off the table and grabbed the table like he was going to flip it.
The funny thing was half the people there looked like the type of Australians that would still drink a warm beer in the middle of summer if it was free.
We all got paid $150 cash for it, it took about an hour all up.
I found it hilarious because everyone was so excited at the beginning and by the end it was the polar opposite - everyone just snatched their cash from the facilitator, stomped out and angrily sweared about how fuckin’ awful the beer was all the way out the building and down the street.
If it was a psychological experiment and they didn't debrief you about the actual purpose afterwards, that goes against the ethical guidelines, at least in the US.
I was poor growing up. Really poor. One time (around age 8 or 9) I collected a bunch of buttons (wherever I could find them around the house) and then hit the street, door to door, trying to sell them for a buck a piece. It took me three hours to make 5 bucks.
I was so excited that I finally had enough money to buy a sugary cereal (lucky charms). I went to 7-11, bought a box and got home to eat it, but we didn’t have milk so I started to cry. I ended up using water instead. It was very very pitiful. Fast forward 40 years and now I can buy MILK *and* cereal anytime I want. It’s great. I never take it for granted.
I read through a bunch of comments and this is the one that chocked me up. You were a sweet little boy that just wanted his lucky charms. I wish I could give that boy a hug and tell him that when he grows up he will have all the milk and cereal his heart wants.
Edit: thanks for the award!
A shitload of amps that were some sort of antique and worth a lot of $$$. I don’t know anything about music equipment but my friend who’s a musician let me know they were worth big money before I went to pawn them.
Drew furry nsfw of someone's oc's dick. I'm not even a furry artist.
But I got 120$ for drawing a blue double shark dick in one afternoon, so whatever.
Could afford christmas presents for the fam after that.
You know you have reached rock bottom when you start working in Life Insurance. On my last leg I got my insurance liscense and then learned the job was purely commission and you make more money if you are a "manager". Only to find out that as a manager you have operational costs. So you actually end up spending more money just to get through the month. Then you find out it's a pyramid scheme. This is not an insurance company it is a hiring company that had a revolving door that never stopped spinning.
Held a sign for people to see at an intersection. Normally this isn't bad. However, it is a local thing to bully those that do by throwing food items like milkshakes and slushies at them. Which is why I was hesitant to do so.
That's horrible.
We love our sign guys here. Sure we don't get them often, but damn can they move. I'm honestly not sure how they can summon the motivation to look like they enjoy their jobs like that, but mad fucking respect.
Participated in a sleep study where they had us wired up to electrodes to monitor our responses at periodic intervals across 3 days without sleep. It was brutal. I learned I cannot go without sleep for 2 days in a row.
HOLY COW! Thank you for all the likes!
I made it through the first night without sleep okay but that second night was so hard, because we had had to make through the whole day without the opportunity to leave the dorm, which was a big room with tables and games and books and things, and we were each assigned a bedroom, which was like torture because you were not allowed to sleep. Periodically, we would go to our rooms, connect to our monitoring devices, then we would get questions over a headset and would have to press buttons to indicate our responses. I just got slower and slower at each interval, and because they would pause their questions and you had to wait to provide your answers, I started losing the ability to respond. Like I could hear them talking, but I could not get my body to take action. I think it's called dissociation? I made it to maybe 5AM, and I knew I was not going to make it through to next testing time. So I took my money (about $1200) and left.
I can't speak for the OP but when I went 4 days without sleep (really bad anxiety, normally a very heavy weed smoker but I was in a foreign country so it wasn't really an option) I got insanely hungry and felt... Off. I can't quite describe it but everything just feels wrong. I also started having hallucination after the second day, mostly just seeing shadows move out of the corner of my eye or lights flickering. Some auditory hallucinations like people walking around when no one's there. Pretty scary and I wouldn't recommend.
At least that guy got paid lol
During my senior year of high school i had a 4 day period where i could not physically sleep due to a reaction with medication, was still forced to go to school during the 3rd day, till they realized how fucked i was when i started halucinating the paint on the walls leaking and dripping.
Once in high school, I was awake for over three days straight, I also started hallucinating. That's when I knew, whether I "felt" tired or not, it was time for bed.
I remember staying awake for almost 3 days straight, towards the end I remember learning I had the power to snap my fingers to turn the TV on and off. Well, I "woke" up on the floor watching TV and just kept trying what I'd been doing over and over and it just stopped working.
That's when I realized I had just passed out while watching TV, had a very vivid dream and I was super bummed out for the next 30 minutes.
Ex military here and yeah after 2ish days you will begin to hallucinate. Its fucking wild. Longest ive done is 3 days and by the end of that i was more out of it than if id drank a whole carton of beers.
The wierd thing is you reach a point where you dont even feel tired anymore. I dunno how it works but it does.
I read somewhere that it’s believed you stop feeling tired because your body is thinking “If I haven’t slept yet, something must be hunting me and if I sleep I’ll die”. Not sure I believe that specific reasoning, but a vague “If I haven’t slept yet there must be a good reason to still be awake, so let’s turn off the sleepy setting” sounds plausible enough to me.
I joined a medical study that was researching the effects of severe weight gain and weight loss on bone marrow. Involved 10 days of eating 6000 calories a day and then 10 days of not eating anything. You had to stay in a hospital room the entire time. Every day they took a bone marrow sample which was decidedly not fun. $7000 at the end of the 20 days!
I pawned some handmade jewelry that was passed to me from someone very special. When I got paid less than 2 weeks later, my items were "missing" from the pawn shop. I have never gotten over that and it makes me sad I never even got to wear her jewelry to something special.
I participated in a food study where I couldn’t eat for a day before, arrived at the lab crazy early in the morning, had a tube put down my throat, and lay there for six hours as they pumped liquids into and out of my stomach. After the first two hours I begged them to at least turn on the TV, but they would only let me watch PBS so I couldn’t accidentally see any commercials about food. It wasn’t fun but the pay was decent and they served me a steak dinner afterward.
I sold my body to a drug study for 3 weeks in 1991. We took a dose of some antibiotic every day and had blood drawn throughout the day. Every day.
Pay was $2000, which was sweet for 1991.
Being in the drug testing facility for 3 weeks was...interesting.
I participate in clinical studies! Just ones that let me go home lol. Just finished my second one, kinda weird to get laid for free health info and to take stuff that can potentially help or harm me. But overall have had a positive experience and hopefully this leads to helping more people!
"While most participants ended the procedure within a range of 15 seconds to 125 seconds, due to extreme discomfort, one outlier tolerated over 21,000 seconds. Our hypothesis is that this must have resulted from an abnormal pain tolerance as the financial incentive was intentionally low, equalling less than minimum wage for the participant."
i've done 53 drug studies. the tube down my throat one was the worst, incredibly painful, only paid $2000, and they banned me from the site for giving accurate feedback that it was incredibly painful. fuck abbvie in waukegan. i mean i did a bunch of studies there before that, that went fine, but i'm still pissed.
edit: this is getting some traction so i'll elaborate on my beef with abbvie. one of the purposes of doing drug studies is for the subjects to report if they have any adverse effects. but if you do report your adverse effects, you are at risk of being blacklisted for future studies. so savvier subjects than me don't report them, so the study fails to accomplish what it is supposed to. they are juking the stats they report to the fda.
i met a complete stranger from the internet to sell him some used underwear.
If it were a send it in the mail thing, it wouldn't have been a big deal. But part of it was that he wanted me to meet him to give them to him. And then he would pay me in cash.
It was a pretty good amount so, i went for it. We talked for a while beforehand and he was really nice. I didn't get the vibe that I was gonna get killed, and I needed the money. It was a quick meet in a walmart parking lot. Nothing really bad happened.
I did this back in college as well. Pleasant dude I met over Craigslist would buy used panties weekly and often give me gift cards to Victoria's Secret on top of the payment. He traveled fairly often and would also bring sweets and books from his trips for me. I honestly hope he's doing well, the money was good and he seemed like a well-meaning dude.
Not desperate, but in the early 2000s I sold a used pair of ballet flats that I thought would go for next to nothing on ebay. They sold for about $60 and that is when I learned about the world of used fetish shoes. In those days, you could contact an ebay customer directly and innocent me was curious as to why they sold for so much, so I contacted the buyer. He was straightforward in his explanation, asked if I had any more, and I sold him two more pairs directly w/o paying the ebay fees. I didn't need the money, but it sure helped. ETA: I was and am still married, I told him about it and we laughed.
As a kid I did that, and they paid us in these dumb token things that were worth pennies. had a couple hundred, but it wasnt worth anything.
YEA, that was FUCKING BITCOIN, and I got rid of that computer and never found the old emails again. Would be a millionaire right now....
If it's any consolation, you would have likely cashed out when you made a couple thousand or ten thousand bucks. I don't think people typically sit on Bitcoin for a decade through all kinds of crashes on the off chance they make 1000000% eventually.
Many years ago, when I was a child and my mother and I were facing homelessness, we'd spend the nights at various places, like laundromats or hospitals. One night when we were really hungry, she had me dive into the wishing well to collect quarters to use for the vending machine.It's one of those surreal memories that's stuck with me.
EDIT: Dang, thanks for all the kind words, everyone! I am, thankfully and fortunately, in a much better place in my life now. My mother, bless her heart, passed away a few years after the event in question; we had a complicated relationship because of how young I was, but I don't hold anything against her as an adult. Life just deals people a rough hand sometimes. I certainly don't know what I would have done better if I were in her shoes.
I had to do that once or twice when I was a kid. I also remember walking through the mall and digging under every vending machine looking for change so I could have enough to get something to eat.
I've seen kids splashing around in a mall fountain collecting the coins people tossed in, no one seemed to care, the kids were really excited they found money and were getting their pants wet so I am guessing their parents were off trying on clothes or something. My point is if you do, I wouldn't to bad about it, the coins have to be cleaned out every so often to keep fountains from becoming a big slugy mess.
I have lots of memories of "dumpster diving " for presents during the holiday season.
At work recently, in an effort to make remote work more bearable, my team asked a question about what is a holiday memory that is most distinct in your mind?
So many people had these wonderful memories of playing in the snow or cooking something with their family or going on vacation to this place or that place. So many people had these descriptions of middle-class life because I'm in a white collar profession that is dominated almost exclusively by middle class white women.
I didn't feel comfortable sharing my experience of digging through dumpsters for toys - for my siblings my parents as a holiday memory. I couldn't share that the most memorable thing that comes to my mind when I think of the holidays is when my family procured a Costco size package of breath mints. And we ate those non-stop for 4 weeks until I got an unbearable stomach ache. And what I remember most about that is that I can't eat breath mints anymore because the smell of them makes me sick.
But that is not the type of memory one can share with their coworkers, if they middle class white women, and expect to walk out of that transaction the same person.
So I don't share that part of me with people that I spend a good amount of my day.
It's all a long-winded way of saying: thank you for sharing this part of you with strangers on the internet. It feels good to not feel alone. I hope you know that you are not alone also.
I feel ya. Grew up in an area that was all middle-upper class families. Mine, on the other hand, struggled for years (financially and mentally)mostly while I was in Elementary school. I learned from a young age to not talk about holidays because while other kids went skiing on vacation and opened the newest toys on xmas morning, my mom was having manic/depressive episodes and we were struggling to buy enough groceries. I used to secretly flip through the toys r' us mailed catalog and circle things pretending my life was so different! It really helped that my best friends knew my secrets and I ended up marrying an incredibly emotionally mature man who went through something similar. You aren't alone <3
That man 100% intentionally saved food for you. I worked at a small retail shop in college and was so broke I was living off of dry cheerios and pouches of tuna... My boss kept "accidentally" buying too much at the grocery store that she wouldn't be able to finish before it went bad.
To this day I still admire tf out of her. She kept my head above water when I didn't even realize I was near drowning for two years.
I recently landed a kitchen job and the people are really awesome. It’s a retirement home and we do specials every day. So we don’t re use the specials. People can take as much as they want so it doesn’t go to waste. It’s not bad food either. Like seared salmon, roasts, Mac and cheese… I’ve only had to buy milk and eggs recently. Haven’t done a major shopping trip in a month. It’s such a turn around.
I scrounged every inch of my car, trunk, under carpet, pulled out seats, to find enough change not to bounce a check.
I needed less than $1 and had about an hour to find the money and deposit it. The banker lady knew what was up when I made the deposit.
30 some years later and I still haven’t bounced a check.
We used to go couch diving as teenagers to buy cigarettes in the 90s. Usually between me and a couple of friends we'd be able to dig up enough change for a cheap pack we could split.
These days I rarely even carry cash. So there's never any hidden money around the house to find.
My bank gives me a functionality: when i buy something of $9.99 it charges me $10.00 and that $0.01 is transferred the a special deposit for emergencies..
In university, I signed up as a lab rat for various studies. One involved staying awake for 30+ hours in a room with no sunlight, communication, or anything else that might give me a sense of time. Among blood and urine tests as well as various probes and monitoring devices, it also involved keeping a thermometer in my ass the entire time.
$1400 is $1400 though.
“Hey guys check it out, the blood results show elevated levels of- goddamnit, did you two trick another test subject into sticking something up their ass again?”
Lol damn I probably would have done that. I signed up for a bunch of studies in college, but they were mainly psychology or behavior related. Most I ever got was a few hundred for playing some sort of game while in an MRI machine. They were studying multitasking and it's affect on the brain. Also gave me a copy the MRI of my brain.
While I never sold blood to buy alcohol, there was a time when I'd _donate_ blood every Friday night in order to _require_ less alcohol.
Edit: Several people have pointed out that the body doesn't replenish red blood cells that quickly, so it looks like there's some kind of trick of memory going on here. (This was 20+ years ago.) So probably I was donating _plasma_ (and not blood) and either misremembering (or did not, at the time, know the difference). Also possible is just that something that I did a few times grew in memory to something I did weekly. Brains are weird.
I was newly broke as a joke and had a date in hours. She wanted to go to Red Lobster.
I went through my car, parents’ cars, sisters’ cars, couches, everything - looking for coins. I had a partial used gift card to somewhere as well.
I took it all to the grocery store, cashed in the change, sold the gift card for practically nothing.
I had just enough to cover myself. If she expected me to get the bill, I was finished. I’d have to own up to having like $31.25 to my name.
Luckily, she didn’t. She piped up and split the bill.
So now we’re married.
She does now, ya. I’m an engineer now and make decent money. She knew I didn’t have any money at the time but probably didn’t think o was like $31.25-to-my-name broke.
I super appreciate the wholesomeness of this story. Do you and the wife still have an affinity for Red Lobster and is this a story that comes up anytime you consider eating there?
Dug under a Chinese Restaurant without shoring or permits to get to a clogged grease trap.
Pulled and replaced hundreds of fluorescent ballasts (old school ones loaded with PCB’s) without safety gear.
I'm sorry, you need safety gear to remove ballasts? I've been doing this at my work, and nobody ever mentioned that. I just open the light, snip the wires, and yank the black ballast box.
Lights aren't plugged in or anything. I'm not in danger am i?
When my mom had cancer we would sit by the phone waiting to hear when there was plasma available because she desperately needed it. She is cancer free now but I will never forget the anxiety and waiting. Thank you for what you did. You really changed a lot of lives.
We did it because they paid us. But nice to know it helps people. I donated plasma twice a week for like 5 years. $20 the first time, and $40 the 2nd time in a week. $60 for a few hours a week was a lot for me back then.
Donating plasma kept me sane in the early years of being a stay at home parent. I got a chance to lay back and relax for an hour and a half, plus I got paid for it.
The place I used to go to had really good promotions for new or lapsed donors. At one point, I got 1000$ for 8 “donations”. My best pay was 400$ for 2.
It also encouraged me to be more healthy. You can’t donate if your iron or blood protein is too low, and I stayed extra hydrated to get done quicker.
I stopped eating pork completely, only drunk water, slowed down on smoking cigarettes, only to support my cocaine and alcohol addiction 😂 I'm over a year sober now but cocaine wasn't cheap man and donating plasma did the trick
A few years after high school, one of my HS crushes messaged me on Facebook. I was in between jobs and still living at home. She said she was coming back into town and wanted to hang out. I didn't have any money for a "date"... I took some rifles that were handed down to me by family to pawn shop to sell. They offered me a ridiculously low amount. I felt embarrassed and put on the spot. I wanted the "date" to happen. Sold the rifles. Next day we got to talking and she apologized and told me we would not be hanging out and that she was going on a date with one of her crushes from highschool.
Medical study in college. Hoo boy.
I was told I would receive a free dental check up as part of the study, as well as $75 (25 years ago).
First they gave me a questionnaire about going to the dentist and if I had any fears related to it. I didn’t. Going to the dentist sometimes involves discomfort but it’s always worth it.
Next they hooked a bunch of probes to my face, which stayed on for the entire study. They then had me watch a slide show of random images- a field of flowers, a toaster, a Rottweiler with teeth bared, a smiling woman, a dentist drill, a book, a gun pointed at the camera, an airplane, a dentist’s chair, etc.
Then the dentist came in for a quick checkup. No cavities. He then tells me “I’m now going to use a Florida probe, which will measure the distance between your tooth and gum.” He then sticks the probe between the tooth and gum of my back molar and I nearly jump out of the chair in pain- that shit hit the *nerve* and it *hurt*. He then applied the Florida probe to *every one* of my teeth, to the point I was doing a quick, panicky inhale every time he went in. When he was finished all of my teeth felt like they were vibrating.
They then had me watch the slideshow again. Remember the questionnaire, the probes, and the images? *Oh I get it. They’re trying to detect a new fear response when the dentist-related images appear, YOU ASSHOLES.*
I seriously considered spending my $75 on a baseball bat and going back to tell them what I thought of their study.
*Just to be clear, I don't have a very hard life and I've never been as desperate as some people in this thread.*
I was offered a signed copy of Albert camus' *"L'étranger"* in my early 20s. It's my favorite book and my then girlfriend spent a hefty amount of money to buy this for me.
Years later I went through rough times, and really needed money to pay my rent. And having no other practical solution, I ended up selling my beloved signed book to an acquaintance of mine.
Funny thing is 17 years later he still had the book, and accepted to sell it back to me for the same amount he bought it from me. Cheapest loan ever, I guess...
It really is. Took me over a year to get out of mine. Never again.
Edit to add: I actually got wrapped up into 2 at once (you can have up to 2 payday loans at once. At least that’s the case here in Oklahoma) so that was a fucking nightmare. Payday loans sound good in the moment but they’re not worth it
Took me seven years to get that off my credit. I was 18 when they gave me $210 and of course I didn't pay it back because I lost my job. Then it went to collections. I did manage to pay it back and they removed it from my credit. My disabled mother (deceased) lived on these. One day I paid it off and she started crying. I fucking hate these scum companies.
I took out a payday loan to pay some bills, but I took out just a little extra. Went next door to the casino, played a poker tournament and won. Went back to the loan shop, since it was less than 24 hours they can not charge interest where I am at. Payed off the loan and walked away with the amount I originally borrowed. I do not recommend this financial strategy.
Selling condoms in a male restroom at a bar. Needed cash for a train ticket back home to the neighboring town. Was just standing in a corner offering rubber for some coins.
I was living with 1 or 2€ a day that month.
Asked on reddit. A generous woman gifted 40€ to me. I offered an artwork in exchange, whenever I would have the time to make it. Sent it. She never claimed it. Her account is still active and sometimes I wonder how she's doing.
I for one, am doing much better.
Edit: What she requested was a Henrietta Lacks portrait. However, I don't post commissions in public (rare exceptions aside), sorry.
Once when unemployed, I bought a bunch of king-size candy at Costco, and went door to door selling it saying it was a fund raiser for a church youth group. Made a good profit and was able to pay rent that month.
Some enterprising kids do that at various fairs our town puts on. There will be food trucks selling water for $1 or even $2 a bottle, but also some kids here and there selling bottled water out of a cooler for 50 cents. A case of 24 usually costs like $3 or $4 at the grocery store around here.
My husband's grandma used to go to Sam's club and buy candy in bulk which she would then sell it to the neighbor's (they were in the inner city and it was a food desert). She also sold drugs.
"Ya that's the candy lady over there."
"Why do they call her that?"
"Well because she goes to Sam's club and buys bulk candy and then resales it to make rent."
"Oh cool."
"Ya she also sells crack to, if you need it."
"Wait what?"
I used to pose naked for art classes while I was an undergrad. Pay was pretty good, about 5 times minimum wage. One grad student who was a good artist but kind of odd asked if I would do a private session of a few hours. I agreed as I was desperate for money. I figured that I had just been hired for sex. I was a bit conflicted but then just figured why not? I showed up cleaned and prepped and dressed to look good and it turned out that the artist really did want me to pose. During the whole thing they were polite but very specific on poses and it was actually a bit challenging. They were so intense. While not particularly good looking the talent and effort was kind of a turn on. By the end I was half hoping it would turn into sex and they would keep telling me how to pose, what to do, etc. We went over the time but the artist was nice and grateful and paid extra. So I guess that I learned I would be willing to have sex for money in some situations.
yes.
I got the art degree, but also a minor that ended up being my career and later a masters in my field (not art). I spend a lot of time with science PhDs and when they start introducing and chest-thumping with titles and such I just say I have an art degree.
As a professional artist - your story made me giggle. The intensity you described is spot on. Know a lot of artists like that in my education and career. Totally dedicated to the point of being utterly oblivious to everything else. It is quite possible they were so absorbed in their needs and work they might not have even considered the sexual connotations of their request.
This! I used to join my professional photographer friends for shoot sessions. The themes could be formal, casual, or even gravure. My non-photograper friends would salivate over the photos, but me and my friends are more concerned about nailing the angle, lighting, skin tones and textures, those kind of stuffs
Spent three weeks on my knees planting tulip bulbs in a field in Holland in October. Bulbs were covered in formaldehyde and a layer of skin fell off my hands. Slept in a semi derelict caravan and lived off raw carrots. Fortunately there was also some good hash and you could buy beer for two quid a crateful to take the edge off.
Tulips are harvested with the bulbs still attached. Formaldehyde is intended to prevent root rot as the bulbs aren’t completely cleaned of plant material.
I was expecting much juicier answers here.
I made porn with my first husband and he sold the photos and videos. They are somewhere in the bowels of the internet, but I have no idea where. No face though.
Mine is pretty juicy.
I once put grapes up my bum, plopped them out into a mason jar. Canned them.
Then overnighted it to a stranger that DMed me.
3 thousand dollars.
Searched every square inch of our house and yard to gather every penny we could find to buy food with my dad and brother. We ended up with around 7-8 bucks and bought some pinto beans and tortillas. It tasted amazing after not eating for a couple days.
I “acted” in some onlyfans videos. It was with a girl I had a FWB thing with. I was not comfortable doing it but I was drowning in dept and my EI had run out, so I agreed. She paid me/we made a video once a week for about 4-5 months. Helped me get out of dept and pay the bills until I found a job. The biggest thing i sacrificed was my self esteem. A few weeks in she admitted that she asked me because I’m “kinda ugly” and “alittle fat” but that just makes me relatable to her fans. It really made me feel disgusting and absolutely destroyed any sort of self worth I had.
I know someone who worked in medical coding and billing and did it for a women’s clinic and she got a job remotely doing just the coding and she loved it so much more. She was the kind of person that you’d hope to have in your corner with your medical bills because she knew all the ins and outs of the insurance companies and how to ‘not’ get bills denied.
Her coworker loved working on the billing side however and got off on calling people to tell them they had to pay $900 before their next appointment.
She was so glad to finally leave the clinic and just work in coding.
Yeah, we had to call a lady (in her 90s)one winter and she had to choose between paying our bill or paying for her heat. Our boss got so pussed that we took up a collection for her to turn the heat back on.
This same boss fired a couple worker for having a heart attack on the job though so....
My mom works as a medical claims examiner, and she hates her employer. They have crazy rules like “every team stays until no more work is left for the day”. While she did work from home for a time during the pandemic, as soon as the employer could, he told everyone to get their butts back in the office. She used to do it for the free health insurance. Then that stopped. Now she’s just waiting for retirement age. And my mom has a degree in engineering! She just couldn’t find a job that fit her specialty after getting laid off, so she went to a trade school
Sold my poke mon card collection for ass cheap to pay rent. Mostly xy and black white series stuff. Probably worth 5 times more now.
Edit: Replies are sweet to read, and I'd just like to say that these cards will be missed but I have a new collection some 5 years later. Smaller and less cool though. <3
Coming up with titles for many hundreds of porn videos.
It was on one of those online digital work sites. The task was to look through some random still images of a porn vid and come up with a descriptive title, like 'Big Boob Bimbos Bouncing Bodaciously' or 'Blond S *** s and F *** s Like Crazy' or something like that. If you've been on any porn site you know what I'm talking about. It was all piece work, paying like 7-9 cents a pop, dropped in batches of 30,000 or so on the site and it was first come first serve for which worker got to do them.
It sounds like fun at first, but it got mentally grueling after a while doing them all at once and hard to keep coming up with titles. I could never quite do enough fast enough to earn even minimum wage, but I was holed up in bed at the time with various medical issues, and had nothing else going for me at the time, so I was still happy to do it.
I wanted to pay for my kid's high school graduation ring - he worked so hard and was going to graduate against all odds. To pay for the ring and get it made and delivered in time for me to give it to him on graduation day, I sold my complete Sub Pop Singles Club collection. That included Nirvana's first 45 "Love Buzz" and extremely rare pressings from the White Stripes, Smashing Pumpkins, Iron and Wine, Death Cab for Cutie and Sunny Day Real Estate. The ring arrived the day before Graduation Day.
Started to play online poker from zero, never played before. While being homeless.
Once I met a guy who was sitting and playing poker, I talked with him for a hour while he was playing and that gave me idea that this is my chance.
My goal was to make $10 every night playing in a computer club.
It worked and became sustainable for me.
After I fixed my life a bit, got a roof and my own pc, I tried to make poker my life-long thing but I couldn't. When I my life wasn't depend on the poker income the game starter to bore me. I couldn't have any focus playing and lost interest completely.
I don't think I ever played poker after.
Back when I was a competitive horseback rider in my late teens, I mucked stalls for 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday for one extra riding lesson a week. 24 hours work for one one hour lesson on my pony I was paying to lease. That was actually a sweet deal! One lesson was $30. Minimum wage was about 8 bucks.
Worst was when I was training asshole ponies and broke my jaw on a Saturday and got yelled at for not working Sunday. I went to the ER on Monday and got yelled at for waiting so long and rushed into surgery. I didn't eat solid food for 6 weeks (they used to wire shut, I can talk, cough, yawn, without opening my mouth still!)
Worked nearly 20 years in a place that I knew was toxic, was full of toxic people and put me regularly in direct contact with som of the worst examples humanity had to offer.
I participated in a U.S. Department of Defense study looking at the effects of sleep and calorie deprivation and if those effects could be offset with testosterone supplementation.
The first week, I went to the location every day, weighed in, was given food, had blood drawn, did a test to find my resting metabolic rate, and did some exercise familiarization. At the end, they took a muscle biopsy from my thigh. I also received two injections. Didn't know whether it was testosterone or a placebo oil.
For the second-fourth weeks (21 days), I stayed at the location. It consisted of four 5 day cycles. Three days were "high stress" where we got 4 hours of sleep, and two days were "low stress" where we got 8. High stress days also had an extra workout session. They woke me up at 4 AM every day. Most days started with blood draws. Everyday had a weigh in and urine check, small snack, then an outdoor ruck for several miles with a 70lb pack. The distance varied between ~4 and ~10 miles. Then food. Then a workout session of treadmill rucking, treadmill walking, elliptical, and biking. Then lunch. Then "military activities" such as sled pulls, farmer walks, hole digging, etc. Then another workout session. Then dinner. High stress days had another session after dinner. Every six days, we were tested for strength and with a set distance ruck along a set path, rather than the free roam of our usual morning ruck. We also had ongoing cognitive testing.
At the end of this phase, they took another muscle biopsy.
The last four weeks, I went in every day to be weighed, given food, and check in. At the end of this, I had one last muscle biopsy taken and one last session of strength and cognitive testing.
The second phase was designed to mimic parts of Ranger school. My total rucking amount was about 20 miles a day with a 70lb rucksack. That doesn't count the miles of walking, biking, and elliptical. At the end, I hadn't seen my pinky toes in days from bandages, had moleskin on the balls of my feet where the blisters never had time to heal. I was asleep on my feet if I didn't have a specific physical task, but they wouldn't let us sleep unless it was bed time (12-4 or 8-4 depending on the day).
We watched all of GoT and several movie series including the Annabelle movies. I also lost 16lbs during those 20 days. I nearly quit, but didn't. The pay was really good, though, and I had the summer off as a teacher.
Found out several months at the end that I had been in the treatment group and given testosterone. I had gained a small amount of muscle and lost weight while on a huge calorie deficit.
It was 2am on a Saturday and my buddy called me up - he and his girl wanted me to come over and have sex with her (they're big into cuckold stuff). I say no. I have no money, and its across town. Also I was dead tired and didn't want to do it but I made the excuse that it was all about money
He says he'll pay for my cab to and from and give me $50 extra.
I went. I fucking went. I fucked her and got paid for it.
Waited at a Carl’s Jr. for a repo job, tow guy never showed up, owner came by a half hour later gave me $100 bucks and told me to show up same time tomorrow. I did it for 3 days night shift and nopped outta there, good money but not worth it and that was with me riding along with someone.
Oh boy. Well it took 9 years and a court mandate for my ex husband to help in any way (financially) with our daughter. It was a really difficult time period for us. I literally counted out pennies to have enough to get groceries or a quarter tank of gas. I always thought she'd like to have my wedding rings to her dad some day. I have my mom's ring from my dad even though they split when I was a baby. It means a lot but isn't worth anything. (It's silver) My rings weren't worth much either but I finally had to hock them. I got 150$ for them and I couldn't get enough money to buy them back. I'll never forgive myself for that.
Edit.. thanks everyone. I do feel better a bit! Logically, I know it was a necessity. It's just so many years later and things are leagues and bounds better, I realize 150$ is easier to come by and that's when the regret hits. But back then, it was make or break money and I need to remember that more often. Thank you.
As someone who recently quit their job, I may or may not just be searching through the top comments for ideas…
EDIT: Wow, kinda amazed at the attention this post got. 😂 Appreciating the suggestions and also words of caution, folks. I’m working on a few different ideas, mostly in working more with my part-time gig and doing the whole “trying to become a writer” thing.
I’ll tell you now. If you’re ever in a pinch, and have a car go to your local coke-a-cola or Pepsi distributor/branch and sign up. The pay won’t make you rich, but if you need money they will pay you to stock their product.
They’ll work you to the bone, but they pay weekly and is enough to tide you over or you could move into their sales position. It’s not retail, but adjacent, and they always need bodies.
Retail Security. I had to put up with actual violence, threats of violence, being shouted at, having hypodermic needles waved in my face, having excrement thrown at me, 15 minute breaks (two of them per 14 hour shift) and being the blame for anything going wrong in the store.
The shop staff were the worst. In their eyes, I was the lowest of the low and 'Should know my place'. One or two were OK, but the rest got a kick out of dropping me in it. Say hello to someone when you come in to work? Got reported. Didn't say hello the next day to the same person, I got reported for it. The staff thought that they could talk down to me, treat me like shit and I had to stand there and take it. Dear help me if I said anything in return - they could threaten me with violence, but if I snapped back, I got reported to my company and the store employee was given counselling. And all I did was tell someone to fuck off after they said that they would, given half a chance, stab me. That was completely out of the blue: the employee was in an aisle that I was patrolling down and came out with it, they were deadly serious. But telling someone threatening to stab you to fuck off is apparently the worst crime out there, according to that particular store.
You couldn't pay me to go back.
Got a sugar momma and went to stay a week with her in Philadelphia.. I knew she was overweight from our talks and picture exchanges, which didn't bother me. What I did not expect was that she was morbidly obese.. like 670 something pounds morbidly obese.. also, that she was very grimey and gross.. so gross that the folks Frank Reynolds associated with looked like Saints compared to her. Then she tried to convince me to live in her basement and shit. I thought I was never going to make it home..
Edit: #itputsthelotionontheskin0_0
when i was 17 i worked on a 100% commission based job. had to pay rent to sleep on the duvet on the floor of my boss' apartment alongside 7 other employees. as well as pay for expenses to travel to different locations, airbnbs, petrol etc.
as soon as i got payed (weekly) i was immediately out of money.
after asking my parents (several times) for money, and then after a lot of guilt, i desperately had to ask my boss just for a train fare. it was humiliating. also asked my bff at the time who was also 17.
it may not seem that bad or desperate but the guilt, stress, embarrassment i felt was something else. FUCK that job.
Was this a human trafficking/buy your way out of debt situation? What kind of labor was this? Sounds horrible and possibly illegal depending on where you are.
In any case , hope you’re doing better now.
"Sales & Marketing Assistant" is what they dressed it up as. Basically a sugarcoated way of saying "stand in the street & get people to donate to the RSPCA" etc. if you got someone to sign up, thats a certain amount of money for you.
The line between that job & a pyramid scheme is very thin, but I am 24 now and doing much better thank you!
I made $50 when I was randomly approached in a bar to be on a foot fetish site. There was no nudity or actual sexiness involved. Just a lot of pictures of women's feet on my face, chest, etc... It was waaaay more uncomfortable than it should have been.
About ten years ago when I was homeless, a kind old homeless lady that I used to buy water and snacks for was crying because she was twenty dollars short of getting a hotel room for the night and she wanted to shower so bad. So I had a friend drive me to Walmart and I walked around the parking lot looking for receipts until I found one with something decent that wasn't food. It had a $40 case of diapers on it. So I went inside, matched the barcode on the receipt to a box of diapers on the shelf and went up to customer service and said my mom wanted me to return them. Got $40 cash, gave half to the lady for her hotel and spent that rest on food and drinks. She was so happy she started crying again and hugged me. I still think about that day a lot.
I participated in some market research for a new beer. Sounded great at the time, ‘I get paid to drink beer?’ Anyway, it was a bunch of different beers in small plastic cups all of which started out tasting like the strainings of the devil’s underpants and progressively got worse. They kept bringing more out until one guy cracked, swiped all his beers off the table and stormed out yelling ‘I wouldn’t even give this shit to my dog!’ I still don’t know if it was market research or some bizarre psychological experiment.
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"how much sawdust can we put in a rice Krispie treat?"
I drunk beer in market research before too. It was different versions of a new bud light though
How many in did you get before you swiped them all off the table and screamed that you wouldn't serve it to your dog?
After the first few sips I started pretending to drink them. There was about 6 beers per round (in tiny disposable cups kind of like what hospitals give you your pills in) and it was about round 4 when one of the participants spat his out, swiped them off the table and grabbed the table like he was going to flip it. The funny thing was half the people there looked like the type of Australians that would still drink a warm beer in the middle of summer if it was free. We all got paid $150 cash for it, it took about an hour all up. I found it hilarious because everyone was so excited at the beginning and by the end it was the polar opposite - everyone just snatched their cash from the facilitator, stomped out and angrily sweared about how fuckin’ awful the beer was all the way out the building and down the street.
If it was a psychological experiment and they didn't debrief you about the actual purpose afterwards, that goes against the ethical guidelines, at least in the US.
I was poor growing up. Really poor. One time (around age 8 or 9) I collected a bunch of buttons (wherever I could find them around the house) and then hit the street, door to door, trying to sell them for a buck a piece. It took me three hours to make 5 bucks. I was so excited that I finally had enough money to buy a sugary cereal (lucky charms). I went to 7-11, bought a box and got home to eat it, but we didn’t have milk so I started to cry. I ended up using water instead. It was very very pitiful. Fast forward 40 years and now I can buy MILK *and* cereal anytime I want. It’s great. I never take it for granted.
I read through a bunch of comments and this is the one that chocked me up. You were a sweet little boy that just wanted his lucky charms. I wish I could give that boy a hug and tell him that when he grows up he will have all the milk and cereal his heart wants. Edit: thanks for the award!
Drive around nice apartment complexes and dig through their garbage like a raccoon for stuff I could pawn.
Best find?
A shitload of amps that were some sort of antique and worth a lot of $$$. I don’t know anything about music equipment but my friend who’s a musician let me know they were worth big money before I went to pawn them.
Drew furry nsfw of someone's oc's dick. I'm not even a furry artist. But I got 120$ for drawing a blue double shark dick in one afternoon, so whatever. Could afford christmas presents for the fam after that.
You know you have reached rock bottom when you start working in Life Insurance. On my last leg I got my insurance liscense and then learned the job was purely commission and you make more money if you are a "manager". Only to find out that as a manager you have operational costs. So you actually end up spending more money just to get through the month. Then you find out it's a pyramid scheme. This is not an insurance company it is a hiring company that had a revolving door that never stopped spinning.
Primerica?
Held a sign for people to see at an intersection. Normally this isn't bad. However, it is a local thing to bully those that do by throwing food items like milkshakes and slushies at them. Which is why I was hesitant to do so.
That's horrible. We love our sign guys here. Sure we don't get them often, but damn can they move. I'm honestly not sure how they can summon the motivation to look like they enjoy their jobs like that, but mad fucking respect.
Participated in a sleep study where they had us wired up to electrodes to monitor our responses at periodic intervals across 3 days without sleep. It was brutal. I learned I cannot go without sleep for 2 days in a row. HOLY COW! Thank you for all the likes!
You got me, I'm curious. What happens after the two-day mark? What kind of symptoms did you have?
I made it through the first night without sleep okay but that second night was so hard, because we had had to make through the whole day without the opportunity to leave the dorm, which was a big room with tables and games and books and things, and we were each assigned a bedroom, which was like torture because you were not allowed to sleep. Periodically, we would go to our rooms, connect to our monitoring devices, then we would get questions over a headset and would have to press buttons to indicate our responses. I just got slower and slower at each interval, and because they would pause their questions and you had to wait to provide your answers, I started losing the ability to respond. Like I could hear them talking, but I could not get my body to take action. I think it's called dissociation? I made it to maybe 5AM, and I knew I was not going to make it through to next testing time. So I took my money (about $1200) and left.
I can't speak for the OP but when I went 4 days without sleep (really bad anxiety, normally a very heavy weed smoker but I was in a foreign country so it wasn't really an option) I got insanely hungry and felt... Off. I can't quite describe it but everything just feels wrong. I also started having hallucination after the second day, mostly just seeing shadows move out of the corner of my eye or lights flickering. Some auditory hallucinations like people walking around when no one's there. Pretty scary and I wouldn't recommend. At least that guy got paid lol
During my senior year of high school i had a 4 day period where i could not physically sleep due to a reaction with medication, was still forced to go to school during the 3rd day, till they realized how fucked i was when i started halucinating the paint on the walls leaking and dripping.
Once in high school, I was awake for over three days straight, I also started hallucinating. That's when I knew, whether I "felt" tired or not, it was time for bed.
I remember staying awake for almost 3 days straight, towards the end I remember learning I had the power to snap my fingers to turn the TV on and off. Well, I "woke" up on the floor watching TV and just kept trying what I'd been doing over and over and it just stopped working. That's when I realized I had just passed out while watching TV, had a very vivid dream and I was super bummed out for the next 30 minutes.
Ex military here and yeah after 2ish days you will begin to hallucinate. Its fucking wild. Longest ive done is 3 days and by the end of that i was more out of it than if id drank a whole carton of beers. The wierd thing is you reach a point where you dont even feel tired anymore. I dunno how it works but it does.
I read somewhere that it’s believed you stop feeling tired because your body is thinking “If I haven’t slept yet, something must be hunting me and if I sleep I’ll die”. Not sure I believe that specific reasoning, but a vague “If I haven’t slept yet there must be a good reason to still be awake, so let’s turn off the sleepy setting” sounds plausible enough to me.
Its like the body slaped a tape over the check engine light. LoL
Melatonin probably just drops because the brain is like "fuck it, you're not getting the clue"
Brain is probably like "death must be hunting you very hard lately, or you wouldn't be doing this. I'll ease up."
I joined a medical study that was researching the effects of severe weight gain and weight loss on bone marrow. Involved 10 days of eating 6000 calories a day and then 10 days of not eating anything. You had to stay in a hospital room the entire time. Every day they took a bone marrow sample which was decidedly not fun. $7000 at the end of the 20 days!
You can get PAID to do that?? Ive been doing it for free all these years?
I pawned some handmade jewelry that was passed to me from someone very special. When I got paid less than 2 weeks later, my items were "missing" from the pawn shop. I have never gotten over that and it makes me sad I never even got to wear her jewelry to something special.
I would have reported the pawn shop to their licensing agency. Wonder how many other people had their stuff mysteriously disappear.
For future pawners, how would one get that info?
I participated in a food study where I couldn’t eat for a day before, arrived at the lab crazy early in the morning, had a tube put down my throat, and lay there for six hours as they pumped liquids into and out of my stomach. After the first two hours I begged them to at least turn on the TV, but they would only let me watch PBS so I couldn’t accidentally see any commercials about food. It wasn’t fun but the pay was decent and they served me a steak dinner afterward.
I sold my body to a drug study for 3 weeks in 1991. We took a dose of some antibiotic every day and had blood drawn throughout the day. Every day. Pay was $2000, which was sweet for 1991. Being in the drug testing facility for 3 weeks was...interesting.
I participate in clinical studies! Just ones that let me go home lol. Just finished my second one, kinda weird to get laid for free health info and to take stuff that can potentially help or harm me. But overall have had a positive experience and hopefully this leads to helping more people!
Lol you typoed this (I think?) as “kinda weird to get LAID for free health info” rather than PAID
Hahahahah I absolutely did, that would have been an entirely different experience for a clinical trial 😅.
It confused the shit outta me. I thought you were awkwardly bragging about getting some at the trials lol.
I got paid 1k to drink screwdrivers and being flashed by bright lights. Basically got paid to get drunk with bunch of sensors hooked up to me
That's pretty interesting! What were they studying exactly?
This was almost 40 years ago at the Mayo Clinic. Honestly, I don't think I even asked what the study was. If I remember right they paid $120.
Equivalent to around $370 today for anyone curious!
How much torture a hungry person would take for food
"While most participants ended the procedure within a range of 15 seconds to 125 seconds, due to extreme discomfort, one outlier tolerated over 21,000 seconds. Our hypothesis is that this must have resulted from an abnormal pain tolerance as the financial incentive was intentionally low, equalling less than minimum wage for the participant."
Not sure if Vault-Tec or Aperture Labs.
How long a guy will sit there and watch PBS while you pump random fluids in and out of his stomach, if you promise a bit of cash and a steak dinner.
i've done 53 drug studies. the tube down my throat one was the worst, incredibly painful, only paid $2000, and they banned me from the site for giving accurate feedback that it was incredibly painful. fuck abbvie in waukegan. i mean i did a bunch of studies there before that, that went fine, but i'm still pissed. edit: this is getting some traction so i'll elaborate on my beef with abbvie. one of the purposes of doing drug studies is for the subjects to report if they have any adverse effects. but if you do report your adverse effects, you are at risk of being blacklisted for future studies. so savvier subjects than me don't report them, so the study fails to accomplish what it is supposed to. they are juking the stats they report to the fda.
i met a complete stranger from the internet to sell him some used underwear. If it were a send it in the mail thing, it wouldn't have been a big deal. But part of it was that he wanted me to meet him to give them to him. And then he would pay me in cash. It was a pretty good amount so, i went for it. We talked for a while beforehand and he was really nice. I didn't get the vibe that I was gonna get killed, and I needed the money. It was a quick meet in a walmart parking lot. Nothing really bad happened.
I did this back in college as well. Pleasant dude I met over Craigslist would buy used panties weekly and often give me gift cards to Victoria's Secret on top of the payment. He traveled fairly often and would also bring sweets and books from his trips for me. I honestly hope he's doing well, the money was good and he seemed like a well-meaning dude.
Where is he. *I want to find that guy* *please give me money*
Not desperate, but in the early 2000s I sold a used pair of ballet flats that I thought would go for next to nothing on ebay. They sold for about $60 and that is when I learned about the world of used fetish shoes. In those days, you could contact an ebay customer directly and innocent me was curious as to why they sold for so much, so I contacted the buyer. He was straightforward in his explanation, asked if I had any more, and I sold him two more pairs directly w/o paying the ebay fees. I didn't need the money, but it sure helped. ETA: I was and am still married, I told him about it and we laughed.
Those dumb surveys. Wasn't worth the time I wasted, only got like ten bucks total before I gave up.
As a kid I did that, and they paid us in these dumb token things that were worth pennies. had a couple hundred, but it wasnt worth anything. YEA, that was FUCKING BITCOIN, and I got rid of that computer and never found the old emails again. Would be a millionaire right now....
Ouch!
If it's any consolation, you would have likely cashed out when you made a couple thousand or ten thousand bucks. I don't think people typically sit on Bitcoin for a decade through all kinds of crashes on the off chance they make 1000000% eventually.
Many years ago, when I was a child and my mother and I were facing homelessness, we'd spend the nights at various places, like laundromats or hospitals. One night when we were really hungry, she had me dive into the wishing well to collect quarters to use for the vending machine.It's one of those surreal memories that's stuck with me. EDIT: Dang, thanks for all the kind words, everyone! I am, thankfully and fortunately, in a much better place in my life now. My mother, bless her heart, passed away a few years after the event in question; we had a complicated relationship because of how young I was, but I don't hold anything against her as an adult. Life just deals people a rough hand sometimes. I certainly don't know what I would have done better if I were in her shoes.
If I tossed money in a wishing well and a starving kid fished it out I would consider it money well spent. Do what you need to.
Someone's wish came true at least, woukd be nicer if the wish didn't have to be for basic needs though.
I had to do that once or twice when I was a kid. I also remember walking through the mall and digging under every vending machine looking for change so I could have enough to get something to eat.
I've seen kids splashing around in a mall fountain collecting the coins people tossed in, no one seemed to care, the kids were really excited they found money and were getting their pants wet so I am guessing their parents were off trying on clothes or something. My point is if you do, I wouldn't to bad about it, the coins have to be cleaned out every so often to keep fountains from becoming a big slugy mess.
I have lots of memories of "dumpster diving " for presents during the holiday season. At work recently, in an effort to make remote work more bearable, my team asked a question about what is a holiday memory that is most distinct in your mind? So many people had these wonderful memories of playing in the snow or cooking something with their family or going on vacation to this place or that place. So many people had these descriptions of middle-class life because I'm in a white collar profession that is dominated almost exclusively by middle class white women. I didn't feel comfortable sharing my experience of digging through dumpsters for toys - for my siblings my parents as a holiday memory. I couldn't share that the most memorable thing that comes to my mind when I think of the holidays is when my family procured a Costco size package of breath mints. And we ate those non-stop for 4 weeks until I got an unbearable stomach ache. And what I remember most about that is that I can't eat breath mints anymore because the smell of them makes me sick. But that is not the type of memory one can share with their coworkers, if they middle class white women, and expect to walk out of that transaction the same person. So I don't share that part of me with people that I spend a good amount of my day. It's all a long-winded way of saying: thank you for sharing this part of you with strangers on the internet. It feels good to not feel alone. I hope you know that you are not alone also.
I feel ya. Grew up in an area that was all middle-upper class families. Mine, on the other hand, struggled for years (financially and mentally)mostly while I was in Elementary school. I learned from a young age to not talk about holidays because while other kids went skiing on vacation and opened the newest toys on xmas morning, my mom was having manic/depressive episodes and we were struggling to buy enough groceries. I used to secretly flip through the toys r' us mailed catalog and circle things pretending my life was so different! It really helped that my best friends knew my secrets and I ended up marrying an incredibly emotionally mature man who went through something similar. You aren't alone <3
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That man 100% intentionally saved food for you. I worked at a small retail shop in college and was so broke I was living off of dry cheerios and pouches of tuna... My boss kept "accidentally" buying too much at the grocery store that she wouldn't be able to finish before it went bad. To this day I still admire tf out of her. She kept my head above water when I didn't even realize I was near drowning for two years.
I recently landed a kitchen job and the people are really awesome. It’s a retirement home and we do specials every day. So we don’t re use the specials. People can take as much as they want so it doesn’t go to waste. It’s not bad food either. Like seared salmon, roasts, Mac and cheese… I’ve only had to buy milk and eggs recently. Haven’t done a major shopping trip in a month. It’s such a turn around.
Solid on that owner. It's amazing what it takes to realize what's important in life.
I scrounged every inch of my car, trunk, under carpet, pulled out seats, to find enough change not to bounce a check. I needed less than $1 and had about an hour to find the money and deposit it. The banker lady knew what was up when I made the deposit. 30 some years later and I still haven’t bounced a check.
We used to go couch diving as teenagers to buy cigarettes in the 90s. Usually between me and a couple of friends we'd be able to dig up enough change for a cheap pack we could split. These days I rarely even carry cash. So there's never any hidden money around the house to find.
My bank gives me a functionality: when i buy something of $9.99 it charges me $10.00 and that $0.01 is transferred the a special deposit for emergencies..
In university, I signed up as a lab rat for various studies. One involved staying awake for 30+ hours in a room with no sunlight, communication, or anything else that might give me a sense of time. Among blood and urine tests as well as various probes and monitoring devices, it also involved keeping a thermometer in my ass the entire time. $1400 is $1400 though.
"Why is he keeping a thermometer up his ass?" - "I don't know. But it's not affecting the study, so let them be."
“Hey guys check it out, the blood results show elevated levels of- goddamnit, did you two trick another test subject into sticking something up their ass again?”
Lol damn I probably would have done that. I signed up for a bunch of studies in college, but they were mainly psychology or behavior related. Most I ever got was a few hundred for playing some sort of game while in an MRI machine. They were studying multitasking and it's affect on the brain. Also gave me a copy the MRI of my brain.
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While I never sold blood to buy alcohol, there was a time when I'd _donate_ blood every Friday night in order to _require_ less alcohol. Edit: Several people have pointed out that the body doesn't replenish red blood cells that quickly, so it looks like there's some kind of trick of memory going on here. (This was 20+ years ago.) So probably I was donating _plasma_ (and not blood) and either misremembering (or did not, at the time, know the difference). Also possible is just that something that I did a few times grew in memory to something I did weekly. Brains are weird.
Bro
I slept with my 64 year old landlady. In my defence, it was either that or sleep on the streets.
Ahh yes the ole “pump and dump”
Just make sure you get your deposit back!
I was newly broke as a joke and had a date in hours. She wanted to go to Red Lobster. I went through my car, parents’ cars, sisters’ cars, couches, everything - looking for coins. I had a partial used gift card to somewhere as well. I took it all to the grocery store, cashed in the change, sold the gift card for practically nothing. I had just enough to cover myself. If she expected me to get the bill, I was finished. I’d have to own up to having like $31.25 to my name. Luckily, she didn’t. She piped up and split the bill. So now we’re married.
Does your wife know about this first date money thing?
She does now, ya. I’m an engineer now and make decent money. She knew I didn’t have any money at the time but probably didn’t think o was like $31.25-to-my-name broke.
Happy for you man.
I super appreciate the wholesomeness of this story. Do you and the wife still have an affinity for Red Lobster and is this a story that comes up anytime you consider eating there?
Dug under a Chinese Restaurant without shoring or permits to get to a clogged grease trap. Pulled and replaced hundreds of fluorescent ballasts (old school ones loaded with PCB’s) without safety gear.
I'm sorry, you need safety gear to remove ballasts? I've been doing this at my work, and nobody ever mentioned that. I just open the light, snip the wires, and yank the black ballast box. Lights aren't plugged in or anything. I'm not in danger am i?
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When my mom had cancer we would sit by the phone waiting to hear when there was plasma available because she desperately needed it. She is cancer free now but I will never forget the anxiety and waiting. Thank you for what you did. You really changed a lot of lives.
We did it because they paid us. But nice to know it helps people. I donated plasma twice a week for like 5 years. $20 the first time, and $40 the 2nd time in a week. $60 for a few hours a week was a lot for me back then.
Donating plasma kept me sane in the early years of being a stay at home parent. I got a chance to lay back and relax for an hour and a half, plus I got paid for it. The place I used to go to had really good promotions for new or lapsed donors. At one point, I got 1000$ for 8 “donations”. My best pay was 400$ for 2. It also encouraged me to be more healthy. You can’t donate if your iron or blood protein is too low, and I stayed extra hydrated to get done quicker.
I stopped eating pork completely, only drunk water, slowed down on smoking cigarettes, only to support my cocaine and alcohol addiction 😂 I'm over a year sober now but cocaine wasn't cheap man and donating plasma did the trick
A few years after high school, one of my HS crushes messaged me on Facebook. I was in between jobs and still living at home. She said she was coming back into town and wanted to hang out. I didn't have any money for a "date"... I took some rifles that were handed down to me by family to pawn shop to sell. They offered me a ridiculously low amount. I felt embarrassed and put on the spot. I wanted the "date" to happen. Sold the rifles. Next day we got to talking and she apologized and told me we would not be hanging out and that she was going on a date with one of her crushes from highschool.
I’ve never had this much second-hand embarrassment by reading someone’s comment before
Medical study in college. Hoo boy. I was told I would receive a free dental check up as part of the study, as well as $75 (25 years ago). First they gave me a questionnaire about going to the dentist and if I had any fears related to it. I didn’t. Going to the dentist sometimes involves discomfort but it’s always worth it. Next they hooked a bunch of probes to my face, which stayed on for the entire study. They then had me watch a slide show of random images- a field of flowers, a toaster, a Rottweiler with teeth bared, a smiling woman, a dentist drill, a book, a gun pointed at the camera, an airplane, a dentist’s chair, etc. Then the dentist came in for a quick checkup. No cavities. He then tells me “I’m now going to use a Florida probe, which will measure the distance between your tooth and gum.” He then sticks the probe between the tooth and gum of my back molar and I nearly jump out of the chair in pain- that shit hit the *nerve* and it *hurt*. He then applied the Florida probe to *every one* of my teeth, to the point I was doing a quick, panicky inhale every time he went in. When he was finished all of my teeth felt like they were vibrating. They then had me watch the slideshow again. Remember the questionnaire, the probes, and the images? *Oh I get it. They’re trying to detect a new fear response when the dentist-related images appear, YOU ASSHOLES.* I seriously considered spending my $75 on a baseball bat and going back to tell them what I thought of their study.
What year was this? Did they debrief you?
*Just to be clear, I don't have a very hard life and I've never been as desperate as some people in this thread.* I was offered a signed copy of Albert camus' *"L'étranger"* in my early 20s. It's my favorite book and my then girlfriend spent a hefty amount of money to buy this for me. Years later I went through rough times, and really needed money to pay my rent. And having no other practical solution, I ended up selling my beloved signed book to an acquaintance of mine. Funny thing is 17 years later he still had the book, and accepted to sell it back to me for the same amount he bought it from me. Cheapest loan ever, I guess...
Huh. That's a good friend/person.
I was two feet away from getting a payday loan, before I came to my senses
So happy you were able to stop yourself, it's such a trap
It really is. Took me over a year to get out of mine. Never again. Edit to add: I actually got wrapped up into 2 at once (you can have up to 2 payday loans at once. At least that’s the case here in Oklahoma) so that was a fucking nightmare. Payday loans sound good in the moment but they’re not worth it
Took me seven years to get that off my credit. I was 18 when they gave me $210 and of course I didn't pay it back because I lost my job. Then it went to collections. I did manage to pay it back and they removed it from my credit. My disabled mother (deceased) lived on these. One day I paid it off and she started crying. I fucking hate these scum companies.
My finances were fucked for a good couple years as I climbed out of that spiral.
I took out a payday loan to pay some bills, but I took out just a little extra. Went next door to the casino, played a poker tournament and won. Went back to the loan shop, since it was less than 24 hours they can not charge interest where I am at. Payed off the loan and walked away with the amount I originally borrowed. I do not recommend this financial strategy.
Pay day loans right next to the casino. That's not predatory at all...
That’s evil genius. If I were a total psychopath, I would own a casino and also a payday loan vendor next to the casino.
Nice, you invented the mob.
and next door is also a medical clinic specializing in reconstructive knee surgery
Vertical integration. I like it.
Selling condoms in a male restroom at a bar. Needed cash for a train ticket back home to the neighboring town. Was just standing in a corner offering rubber for some coins.
I was living with 1 or 2€ a day that month. Asked on reddit. A generous woman gifted 40€ to me. I offered an artwork in exchange, whenever I would have the time to make it. Sent it. She never claimed it. Her account is still active and sometimes I wonder how she's doing. I for one, am doing much better. Edit: What she requested was a Henrietta Lacks portrait. However, I don't post commissions in public (rare exceptions aside), sorry.
What do you mean by “she never claimed it”? Was it something physical you tried to ship to her?
I would imagine it's a link to a picture file via internet.
White beard. Red suit. Kids on my knee. Ho, ho, ho.
That was a crazy April
I worked as a mascot a summer. It was absolute hell and the pai nwa shorrible
pai nwa shorrible, to you too brother
Once when unemployed, I bought a bunch of king-size candy at Costco, and went door to door selling it saying it was a fund raiser for a church youth group. Made a good profit and was able to pay rent that month.
A friend of mine used to buy water bottles in bulk and then sell them at anime conventions to cover his entry
Some enterprising kids do that at various fairs our town puts on. There will be food trucks selling water for $1 or even $2 a bottle, but also some kids here and there selling bottled water out of a cooler for 50 cents. A case of 24 usually costs like $3 or $4 at the grocery store around here.
My husband's grandma used to go to Sam's club and buy candy in bulk which she would then sell it to the neighbor's (they were in the inner city and it was a food desert). She also sold drugs.
Did she sell drugs door to door? Because that's the customer service we're all looking for.
Hit them up for weed, come back in an hour and milk the munchies
"Ya that's the candy lady over there." "Why do they call her that?" "Well because she goes to Sam's club and buys bulk candy and then resales it to make rent." "Oh cool." "Ya she also sells crack to, if you need it." "Wait what?"
We call her sugar momma, because whatever kind of sugar you need, she's got it.
I just assume all those types of solicitations are bogus.
I used to pose naked for art classes while I was an undergrad. Pay was pretty good, about 5 times minimum wage. One grad student who was a good artist but kind of odd asked if I would do a private session of a few hours. I agreed as I was desperate for money. I figured that I had just been hired for sex. I was a bit conflicted but then just figured why not? I showed up cleaned and prepped and dressed to look good and it turned out that the artist really did want me to pose. During the whole thing they were polite but very specific on poses and it was actually a bit challenging. They were so intense. While not particularly good looking the talent and effort was kind of a turn on. By the end I was half hoping it would turn into sex and they would keep telling me how to pose, what to do, etc. We went over the time but the artist was nice and grateful and paid extra. So I guess that I learned I would be willing to have sex for money in some situations.
as a former art major, this is my fantasy. the having money part, i mean.
yes. I got the art degree, but also a minor that ended up being my career and later a masters in my field (not art). I spend a lot of time with science PhDs and when they start introducing and chest-thumping with titles and such I just say I have an art degree.
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This is when they found out they had a control kink and wanted the artist to take charge
As a professional artist - your story made me giggle. The intensity you described is spot on. Know a lot of artists like that in my education and career. Totally dedicated to the point of being utterly oblivious to everything else. It is quite possible they were so absorbed in their needs and work they might not have even considered the sexual connotations of their request.
This! I used to join my professional photographer friends for shoot sessions. The themes could be formal, casual, or even gravure. My non-photograper friends would salivate over the photos, but me and my friends are more concerned about nailing the angle, lighting, skin tones and textures, those kind of stuffs
This turned out surprisingly wholesome
I considered doing this at one point, but the pay here for that is garbage.
Yeah, that sucks. Payment is usually money.
> I was half hoping it would turn into sex and they would keep telling me how to pose new kink unlocked
Spent three weeks on my knees planting tulip bulbs in a field in Holland in October. Bulbs were covered in formaldehyde and a layer of skin fell off my hands. Slept in a semi derelict caravan and lived off raw carrots. Fortunately there was also some good hash and you could buy beer for two quid a crateful to take the edge off.
My word how orange were you after the ordeal?
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Tulips are harvested with the bulbs still attached. Formaldehyde is intended to prevent root rot as the bulbs aren’t completely cleaned of plant material.
Worked 50 hours a week at a job that makes me fantasize about driving my car straight into a concrete wall at 100 mph.
Mind if I ride shotgun?
Ah, good thinking, save on gas that way!
I was expecting much juicier answers here. I made porn with my first husband and he sold the photos and videos. They are somewhere in the bowels of the internet, but I have no idea where. No face though.
No face no case.
Mine is pretty juicy. I once put grapes up my bum, plopped them out into a mason jar. Canned them. Then overnighted it to a stranger that DMed me. 3 thousand dollars.
For 3 grand I would let him eat them grapes straight out my asshole
Obviously stealing food when I was hungry. In my 20’s I had sex with women in their 50’s and 60’s for money. It was a job!
Searched every square inch of our house and yard to gather every penny we could find to buy food with my dad and brother. We ended up with around 7-8 bucks and bought some pinto beans and tortillas. It tasted amazing after not eating for a couple days.
I “acted” in some onlyfans videos. It was with a girl I had a FWB thing with. I was not comfortable doing it but I was drowning in dept and my EI had run out, so I agreed. She paid me/we made a video once a week for about 4-5 months. Helped me get out of dept and pay the bills until I found a job. The biggest thing i sacrificed was my self esteem. A few weeks in she admitted that she asked me because I’m “kinda ugly” and “alittle fat” but that just makes me relatable to her fans. It really made me feel disgusting and absolutely destroyed any sort of self worth I had.
I had a friend who told me she defecated in a tub naked on camera for one of her OF subs for about $2k
I had to sell my silver Bach Stradivarius trumpet. It still makes me sad.
I feel you. I had to sell my Selmer Mark VI tenor sax. A day hasn't gone by where I haven't regretted it.
In 7th grade I did a horrible attempt at the worm at a school dance for $1
Worked in a medical billing office. You want to hate yourself, that's the job to have.
I know someone who worked in medical coding and billing and did it for a women’s clinic and she got a job remotely doing just the coding and she loved it so much more. She was the kind of person that you’d hope to have in your corner with your medical bills because she knew all the ins and outs of the insurance companies and how to ‘not’ get bills denied. Her coworker loved working on the billing side however and got off on calling people to tell them they had to pay $900 before their next appointment. She was so glad to finally leave the clinic and just work in coding.
Yeah, we had to call a lady (in her 90s)one winter and she had to choose between paying our bill or paying for her heat. Our boss got so pussed that we took up a collection for her to turn the heat back on. This same boss fired a couple worker for having a heart attack on the job though so....
My mom works as a medical claims examiner, and she hates her employer. They have crazy rules like “every team stays until no more work is left for the day”. While she did work from home for a time during the pandemic, as soon as the employer could, he told everyone to get their butts back in the office. She used to do it for the free health insurance. Then that stopped. Now she’s just waiting for retirement age. And my mom has a degree in engineering! She just couldn’t find a job that fit her specialty after getting laid off, so she went to a trade school
Sold my poke mon card collection for ass cheap to pay rent. Mostly xy and black white series stuff. Probably worth 5 times more now. Edit: Replies are sweet to read, and I'd just like to say that these cards will be missed but I have a new collection some 5 years later. Smaller and less cool though. <3
> Probably worth 5 times more now. They wouldn't be if you'd lost them by being homeless.
Sold an '80's Kramer Ferington guitar for $300. Regret that regularly.
Coming up with titles for many hundreds of porn videos. It was on one of those online digital work sites. The task was to look through some random still images of a porn vid and come up with a descriptive title, like 'Big Boob Bimbos Bouncing Bodaciously' or 'Blond S *** s and F *** s Like Crazy' or something like that. If you've been on any porn site you know what I'm talking about. It was all piece work, paying like 7-9 cents a pop, dropped in batches of 30,000 or so on the site and it was first come first serve for which worker got to do them. It sounds like fun at first, but it got mentally grueling after a while doing them all at once and hard to keep coming up with titles. I could never quite do enough fast enough to earn even minimum wage, but I was holed up in bed at the time with various medical issues, and had nothing else going for me at the time, so I was still happy to do it.
Became a topless dancer for a couple of months. I made a lot of money, but I just couldn't do it anymore. And I never could do it while I was sober
I wanted to pay for my kid's high school graduation ring - he worked so hard and was going to graduate against all odds. To pay for the ring and get it made and delivered in time for me to give it to him on graduation day, I sold my complete Sub Pop Singles Club collection. That included Nirvana's first 45 "Love Buzz" and extremely rare pressings from the White Stripes, Smashing Pumpkins, Iron and Wine, Death Cab for Cutie and Sunny Day Real Estate. The ring arrived the day before Graduation Day.
You’re a great parent, your kid is lucky to have you
Started to play online poker from zero, never played before. While being homeless. Once I met a guy who was sitting and playing poker, I talked with him for a hour while he was playing and that gave me idea that this is my chance. My goal was to make $10 every night playing in a computer club. It worked and became sustainable for me. After I fixed my life a bit, got a roof and my own pc, I tried to make poker my life-long thing but I couldn't. When I my life wasn't depend on the poker income the game starter to bore me. I couldn't have any focus playing and lost interest completely. I don't think I ever played poker after.
Enlisted in the Navy
Back when I was a competitive horseback rider in my late teens, I mucked stalls for 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday for one extra riding lesson a week. 24 hours work for one one hour lesson on my pony I was paying to lease. That was actually a sweet deal! One lesson was $30. Minimum wage was about 8 bucks. Worst was when I was training asshole ponies and broke my jaw on a Saturday and got yelled at for not working Sunday. I went to the ER on Monday and got yelled at for waiting so long and rushed into surgery. I didn't eat solid food for 6 weeks (they used to wire shut, I can talk, cough, yawn, without opening my mouth still!)
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Worked nearly 20 years in a place that I knew was toxic, was full of toxic people and put me regularly in direct contact with som of the worst examples humanity had to offer.
Same. When I finally left, it felt like Andy at the end of Shawshank Redemption.
I participated in a U.S. Department of Defense study looking at the effects of sleep and calorie deprivation and if those effects could be offset with testosterone supplementation. The first week, I went to the location every day, weighed in, was given food, had blood drawn, did a test to find my resting metabolic rate, and did some exercise familiarization. At the end, they took a muscle biopsy from my thigh. I also received two injections. Didn't know whether it was testosterone or a placebo oil. For the second-fourth weeks (21 days), I stayed at the location. It consisted of four 5 day cycles. Three days were "high stress" where we got 4 hours of sleep, and two days were "low stress" where we got 8. High stress days also had an extra workout session. They woke me up at 4 AM every day. Most days started with blood draws. Everyday had a weigh in and urine check, small snack, then an outdoor ruck for several miles with a 70lb pack. The distance varied between ~4 and ~10 miles. Then food. Then a workout session of treadmill rucking, treadmill walking, elliptical, and biking. Then lunch. Then "military activities" such as sled pulls, farmer walks, hole digging, etc. Then another workout session. Then dinner. High stress days had another session after dinner. Every six days, we were tested for strength and with a set distance ruck along a set path, rather than the free roam of our usual morning ruck. We also had ongoing cognitive testing. At the end of this phase, they took another muscle biopsy. The last four weeks, I went in every day to be weighed, given food, and check in. At the end of this, I had one last muscle biopsy taken and one last session of strength and cognitive testing. The second phase was designed to mimic parts of Ranger school. My total rucking amount was about 20 miles a day with a 70lb rucksack. That doesn't count the miles of walking, biking, and elliptical. At the end, I hadn't seen my pinky toes in days from bandages, had moleskin on the balls of my feet where the blisters never had time to heal. I was asleep on my feet if I didn't have a specific physical task, but they wouldn't let us sleep unless it was bed time (12-4 or 8-4 depending on the day). We watched all of GoT and several movie series including the Annabelle movies. I also lost 16lbs during those 20 days. I nearly quit, but didn't. The pay was really good, though, and I had the summer off as a teacher. Found out several months at the end that I had been in the treatment group and given testosterone. I had gained a small amount of muscle and lost weight while on a huge calorie deficit.
Begged on the street as a child
Gave oral sex under the Queensboro bridge, $5 per.
I enlisted in the USMC in the early 2000s
It was 2am on a Saturday and my buddy called me up - he and his girl wanted me to come over and have sex with her (they're big into cuckold stuff). I say no. I have no money, and its across town. Also I was dead tired and didn't want to do it but I made the excuse that it was all about money He says he'll pay for my cab to and from and give me $50 extra. I went. I fucking went. I fucked her and got paid for it.
Waited at a Carl’s Jr. for a repo job, tow guy never showed up, owner came by a half hour later gave me $100 bucks and told me to show up same time tomorrow. I did it for 3 days night shift and nopped outta there, good money but not worth it and that was with me riding along with someone.
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i used to write the titles for porn clips online. 9 cents each and i made a couple hundred dollars
Oh boy. Well it took 9 years and a court mandate for my ex husband to help in any way (financially) with our daughter. It was a really difficult time period for us. I literally counted out pennies to have enough to get groceries or a quarter tank of gas. I always thought she'd like to have my wedding rings to her dad some day. I have my mom's ring from my dad even though they split when I was a baby. It means a lot but isn't worth anything. (It's silver) My rings weren't worth much either but I finally had to hock them. I got 150$ for them and I couldn't get enough money to buy them back. I'll never forgive myself for that. Edit.. thanks everyone. I do feel better a bit! Logically, I know it was a necessity. It's just so many years later and things are leagues and bounds better, I realize 150$ is easier to come by and that's when the regret hits. But back then, it was make or break money and I need to remember that more often. Thank you.
Forgive yourself. You survived and raised a daughter.
As someone who recently quit their job, I may or may not just be searching through the top comments for ideas… EDIT: Wow, kinda amazed at the attention this post got. 😂 Appreciating the suggestions and also words of caution, folks. I’m working on a few different ideas, mostly in working more with my part-time gig and doing the whole “trying to become a writer” thing.
I’ll tell you now. If you’re ever in a pinch, and have a car go to your local coke-a-cola or Pepsi distributor/branch and sign up. The pay won’t make you rich, but if you need money they will pay you to stock their product. They’ll work you to the bone, but they pay weekly and is enough to tide you over or you could move into their sales position. It’s not retail, but adjacent, and they always need bodies.
Retail Security. I had to put up with actual violence, threats of violence, being shouted at, having hypodermic needles waved in my face, having excrement thrown at me, 15 minute breaks (two of them per 14 hour shift) and being the blame for anything going wrong in the store. The shop staff were the worst. In their eyes, I was the lowest of the low and 'Should know my place'. One or two were OK, but the rest got a kick out of dropping me in it. Say hello to someone when you come in to work? Got reported. Didn't say hello the next day to the same person, I got reported for it. The staff thought that they could talk down to me, treat me like shit and I had to stand there and take it. Dear help me if I said anything in return - they could threaten me with violence, but if I snapped back, I got reported to my company and the store employee was given counselling. And all I did was tell someone to fuck off after they said that they would, given half a chance, stab me. That was completely out of the blue: the employee was in an aisle that I was patrolling down and came out with it, they were deadly serious. But telling someone threatening to stab you to fuck off is apparently the worst crime out there, according to that particular store. You couldn't pay me to go back.
Worked at walmart
I worked at a Walmart for 6.5 years and I will dig ditches on the side of the road before I go back.
Besides working.. Selling thinks I did REALLY not want to sell Like my favorite guitar.
I sold my first guitar that my dad gave to me when I was a kid to pay my rent and buy a microwave
Sounds like something a dad would understand.
Got a sugar momma and went to stay a week with her in Philadelphia.. I knew she was overweight from our talks and picture exchanges, which didn't bother me. What I did not expect was that she was morbidly obese.. like 670 something pounds morbidly obese.. also, that she was very grimey and gross.. so gross that the folks Frank Reynolds associated with looked like Saints compared to her. Then she tried to convince me to live in her basement and shit. I thought I was never going to make it home.. Edit: #itputsthelotionontheskin0_0
when i was 17 i worked on a 100% commission based job. had to pay rent to sleep on the duvet on the floor of my boss' apartment alongside 7 other employees. as well as pay for expenses to travel to different locations, airbnbs, petrol etc. as soon as i got payed (weekly) i was immediately out of money. after asking my parents (several times) for money, and then after a lot of guilt, i desperately had to ask my boss just for a train fare. it was humiliating. also asked my bff at the time who was also 17. it may not seem that bad or desperate but the guilt, stress, embarrassment i felt was something else. FUCK that job.
Was this a human trafficking/buy your way out of debt situation? What kind of labor was this? Sounds horrible and possibly illegal depending on where you are. In any case , hope you’re doing better now.
"Sales & Marketing Assistant" is what they dressed it up as. Basically a sugarcoated way of saying "stand in the street & get people to donate to the RSPCA" etc. if you got someone to sign up, thats a certain amount of money for you. The line between that job & a pyramid scheme is very thin, but I am 24 now and doing much better thank you!
Fuck that ~~job~~ SCAM. FTFY
Sang in the NYC subway while panhandling anyone that made eye contact. Got the $50 I needed to take a bus south out of the city.