Hey, when times are tough, you gotta do what you gotta do.
And if you need money, sometimes you do desperate things.
Let’s hear from folks on AskReddit about the most desperate things they’ve done for money.
Start now!
1. Still think about it.
“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.”
2. Okay…
“Drew furry NSFW of someone’s d**k. I’m not even a furry artist.
But I got $120 for drawing a blue double shark d**k in one afternoon, so whatever.
Could afford Christmas presents for the fam after that.”
3. Uncomfortable.
“I made $50 when I was randomly approached in a bar to be on a foot fetish site.
There was no nudity or actual s**iness 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.”
4. Market research.
“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 s**t to my dog!’
I still don’t know if it was market research or some bizarre psychological experiment.”
5. Hustlin’.
“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.”
6. Just like a trash panda.
“Drove around nice apartment complexes and dug through their garbage like a raccoon for stuff I could pawn.”
7. Being studied.
“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!”
8. Hesitant.
“Held a sign for people to see at an intersection. Normally this isn’t bad.
However, it is a local thing to b**ly those that do by throwing food items like milkshakes and slushies at them.
Which is why I was hesitant to do so.”
9. Brutal.
“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.”
10. The pawn shop.
“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.”
11. Sketchy.
“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 k**led, and I needed the money.
It was a quick meet in a walmart parking lot. Nothing really bad happened.”
12. That does not sound pleasant.
“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.”
Do you have any stories like this?
If so, please share them with us in the comments.
Thanks, friends!
