I was snoopy at a fair.

The job description said “must be 160 cm or shorter”. I am 161 cm. This one cm was felt for all the 6 hours.

I was also insanely hot and blind so at one point I started and kept dancing macarena to not pass out and stay awake. I kept getting phone calls for three years afterwards because they wanted me to work for them again. No way.

Not that unusual, but I responded to an ad of an older dude looking for someone who’d go shopping for him. He couldn’t get down the stairs easily anymore. But really, he just wanted someone to talk to. So I’d go to his place, grab the shopping list and money, walk across the street to the nearest supermarket and be back in 20 minutes. And then he’d often cook for me and tell me about his life, travels, the music he composed on his very old computer, stuff like that. I’d get paid for 3-4 hours of which 90% was just talking to this guy about electronic music.

Back when I was in 5th and 6th grade, I used to sell pens, pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners, compass and many other items. It started mainly from me realizing that many people over there nonstop kept asking for spare pens, pencils etc. every day. Some even asked multiple times a day but it was less common. Hell, many didn’t even return stuff I lend them. And I realized I was kinda being used. So, I created a new policy. If you want pens, pencils etc. from me, BUY IT! And at some point, I also realized that some products were a bit cheaper than the shops around my school (yeah, my school was a bit far from my home and I used to travel by bus). So I started buying the cheaper pens and selling them at a higher price at my school (basically at the same price as any other shop near my school).

Hell, I even sold chewing gum one day (which I got as a gift once) and made some money.

One thing I have learnt in life is that if people are in an emergency and they need a certain product extremely in the situation, and you’re the only source at the moment they can get the product from, they will tryna get it even you overcharge them. I did overcharge some people who I had beef with 😹😹

Housesitter/pet sitter for disabled pets - giving twice daily insulin injections to a diabetic dog was very stressful.

I also spent a good amount of time scrapping old electronics for circuit boards, aluminium, copper, and wire. Very large printers, laptops, servers, appliances, whatever I could savemge from the side of the road, from junk auctions, and businesses. I made pretty good money doing this on my spare time. I made several tools that hastened the scrapping process, and built a cable stripper that would strip off the PVC from power cords so I could get the raw copper wire. I probably only made like $20 an hour, but it was after work and I had nothing better to do. Once a month or so I’d fill up my van and take it to the scrapyard for $200-$500

I was messaging a guy on Grindr, and he asked if he could buy my socks — ie the socks that I had been wearing all day. I obliged. I made (iirc) 30$ 😎

Stacking firewood, the summer I was 13 years old. The guy said he’d pay me five bucks a cord, meaning that for every 8 foot section I stacked to four foot high, I got paid five dollars.

Had to bike about seven klicks down a back road every day, to get to a metal warehouse with a yard out back. They kept a log splitter and a conveyor belt set at an angle back there. Strange place, with an old cargo van converted into a flat bed rusting in the tall grass to the side. Their dog didn’t like me.

Hard, hot, heavy work. Firewood sections still slippery and dense from sapweight, and a pile that was liable to collapse if and when you pulled at the wrong piece. I was slow to start and did not improve over time. I believe I averaged about four or five cord a day, which is not bad for a thirteen year old if you ask me.

After a few days of stacking, I had a few rows finished and the pile was getting low. They started running the splitter and belt again, while I was picking firewood from the pile. Once they started that, I couldn’t keep up. This was partially due to the fact that I now had to approach the pile with one eye on the conveyor belt, to time things so that I didn’t get hit with falling pieces. They brought in some other guy one day, who lasted a few hours before getting hit in the hand by a falling piece of wood. I didn’t see him again.

First time I went to ask for my pay, the man counted out 25 five dollar bills and handed them over. He wasn’t lying - it was genuinely five bucks a cord. I was baffled at the time as to why the man would have that many low denomination bills - I learned much later on that he was basically laundering money from illicit sources through this operation, which explained a lot.

I stayed there for about a month and a half, ending my summer with about 500 dollars - enough to buy myself a snowboard with some help from my parents. Strange times.

Having my pets pose for chewy pics

Technically I didn’t make money, I just got some money back. On multiple occasions, a few years after moving homes, the student housing company would suddenly pay back money that I apparently overpaid for gas and electricity. I’d get another email in which they’d apologize (again) and yeet another pile of money my way. It was usually something like 80-200 euros if I remember correctly. Truth is, I never really felt like I was paying much anyway. Compared to what I’m paying now it was absolutely nothing. But hey, I’ll never say no to “free money” I guess…

I designed a board game as a personal challenge and posted my notes online along the way. As the game got close to being finished a publisher messaged wanting to help finish and sell the game. Royalties were enough for a couple small family vacations. That experience really helped cement board gaming (and designing) as one of my core hobbies.

I can fit quarters and €2 coins in my nostrils. I used to have a drunkenness level that would prompt me to assert this at parties or bars, and then I’d obviously show people.

Nobody wants their coins back after that, but it’s not very lucrative and I shudder to think now about the diseases I tempted.

When I was maybe 13 years old my younger sister and I got paid to clear out trash from the home of a family friend who was a hoarder. This person had enough self-awareness to know it needed to be cleaned out, but didn’t have the spoons to do anything about it and so just gave us the keys and full reign while they spent a week traveling. We dealt with lots of old food, stacks of ancient newspapers and magazines, useless decades-old kitchen gadgets ordered from the Home Shopping Channel and never removed from the boxes, dead mice and their poop, that kind of thing.

In retrospect that was a huge health hazard to be irresponsibly throwing kids into, the job should have been done by a team of expensive trained adults with protective gear rather than two idiot children with some yellow kitchen gloves and lawn-sized trash bags, but we were happy enough for the pocket money at the time.

Imported/smuggled and sold packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes at my US high school. I should have charged more, in hindsight.

I used to get paid to roast people online, like Wendy’s.

We got pretty famous locally, but never nationwide. And sales did increase from recognition, so that was nice.

Back then, people would cheer you on as you called a troll a moron.

But now, you call someone a moron, and they would review bomb you. Or worse, shoot up the place. The latter being a real thing, and fortunately, our place was empty. Apparently I struck a nerve.

Of course, the big brands are still immune to review bombs. But roast someone unhinged and them able to walk up to your storefront? Yeah…

Back when I lived with my parents, I had an extended family member who worked in hospitality in Atlantic City. Normally her hotel doesn’t allow pets, but I guess this one guy was rich enough to be an exception to the rule, as he wanted to stay and gamble but had a new puppy that couldn’t be left alone. She made a social media post asking if anyone would be available to dog-sit for him last-minute. I was the first to reply.

I made several hundred dollars by sitting in a random hotel room and playing games on my computer while a sweet puppy slept on my lap. The man expected to be out late, but he came back early and still paid me for the full time.

It was awesome. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Played pre-TV Tim Allen for a bit. Never got caught, but I did get robbed of a whole delivery once. Quit after that, too stressful.