Employees Share Their 'I Can't Believe I Get Paid For This' Stories

Red Stickered....

Worked retail and had to sticker hundreds of items of clothing with little black sale stickers. Just as I'm finishing up, I was told they changed their mind and wanted me to use red stickers instead. So I went back over every item with red stickers. It was also a public holiday in Australia so I was paid 2.5x my average pay, and spent six hours of my shift doing just that.

dyingonmyhill

"downtime" 

My old job deliberately gave us "downtime" when work was slow and wouldn't give us more to do till like 3. So me and my co-workers downloaded left4dead and played co-op lol

But then the bosses were mad we had so much free time like wtf you're the ones who decided to make it like this.

sadgal12

Smut.

I write smut for a living. Every now and then, I write a line or get an idea for a story that's so ridiculously over-the-top that I genuinely have to take a step away from my laptop for a second and question exactly how it is this became my life.

My personal favorite is the very nice email I got from someone who wanted me to commission me to write a story about him being sounded by a Hot Wheels car. He wanted the first half of the story to be about the car stretching out his business as it went in, in great detail... and the second half to be about the damage the car's wing mirrors did.

I politely declined.

(I also love my job, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want to do anything else. It's just really odd sometimes.)

Portarossa

Raise a baby....

In a past job (albeit a low-paid one), I got to help raise a baby sea otter and one day I had the task of combing and fluffing up her fur to keep her waterproof and help her float. I was literally being paid to groom an adorable baby otter.

sentimentalaqua

I want a job sitting at home petting my bunnies. Thank you for inspiring me to reach for my dreams!

shfiven

The Rough Edit.

I once worked as a graphic designer for a well known website/Facebook page about movies/series/video games/music, and sometimes I had to do very poor photo edits, like pasting a famous actor's head on the body of a cartoon character to illustrate the fact that this character will have this famous actor's voice in this movie... Or things like that. I was asked to do the crappiest edit possible to make the post funny.

Swimm_

Backstage Pass....

I used to make video content for social media to drive ticket sales for a major arts festival. I would go to the tech rehearsal for major operas, plays, ballet etc. There would be the full cast and orchestra performing as if they were playing to a full house but it was just me and my camera. I could move around to get the right shot.

I could go backstage and interview the performers and whoever else was in my brief to talk to. I got to tour around with an opera once. I have no background in this. I'm completely self taught and had only done really pedestrian jobs before this. It was amazing, I never would have wanted to go to an opera or ballet before this came along. If you ever have the chance to see something like this go. It's not as boring as you think it will be.

SavingsNecessary

I was a photojournalist.

I was a photojournalist.

Getting paid to sit on the sidelines of major sporting matches, at the sound desk or in the pit of bands from ACDC to ZZTop meet all sorts of interesting people and create a photo to help tell their story.

I photographed John Cleese during a sound check - he went on a 20 minute rant about photographers - I had to ask him to stop as I was laughing so hard I couldn't take pictures, met Jackie Stewart and heard him speak about his time as a formula one driver.

It was an amazing job, and one I was very lucky to do for as long as I did - some days I would think "Some people would pay to be able to do this."

There were crap days too - sitting in the hot sun at a murder scene all day, watching police bag evidence sucks, as does attending car crashes in the middle of the night, in the rain. But I remember the good days better than the bad ones. Echo63_

Exposed. 

Expos. They bought my department first class high-speed train tickets to get there, paid all food, rooms, etc. and let us wander around and see all the technology and innovations. every customer or supplier of ours waved us into their booth, gave us beer, food, and free swag.

After the expo, there was a company party on the expo floor in our booth, free food, booze, and seeing probably 90% of senior staff of our company completely hammered.

Aside from that as a recent grad who had previously only had temp and part time jobs, I'm still amazed I have paid vacation (and a lot of it at that).

UltimateAnswer42

Not a bad gig.

I lifeguarded for 3 years, sooooo much. When it gets rainy and everyone leaves the pool, they normally keep us around just in case it clears up. We watch tv and raid the snack bar. We play in the pool sometimes and blast music on the speakers. Having a party with a bunch of cute girl lifeguards while getting paid by the hour = not a bad gig.

ADecentURL

Fake News.

Not at my job, but I was once in a documentary of the miners strike.

I got paid to spend a weekend throwing fake rocks at fake cops, shouting at them, it was so much fun.

TomasNavarro

110% Positive. 

I used to get paid to hack into companies networks, for the longest time it was my I can't believe I get to do this legally and get paid stupid amounts of money for it. Then it just started angering me when I realized all the companies network security suck, many were hiring me for a compliance check box and when I'd come back the following year they hadn't done anything, in some cases not even change the damn passwords I used from the year prior.

I now maintain a large list of companies I will never do business with using any type of credit card because I'm 110% positive it will be compromised if it hasn't been already.

emhphx

Dungeons and Dragons.

A positive one! I get to teach kids how to play Dungeons and Dragons for six weeks every summer. Rolling into work dressed in an elf princess costume and getting to play a game for seven hours a day it feels unreal. Am still incredulous every time that direct deposit hits.

puppypuppyl0v3

WOOF!!

Oh hey I can answer this one. I'm a dog trainer and we help dogs that are reactive to other dogs when on leash (i.e., barking/lunge at dogs when on walks) and one of the ways we do this is to drag a stuffed dog around (looks realistic) at a distance. You even talk to the stuffed dog, pet it, and pretend to feed it. All of this is happening while another trainer feeds the real dog any time they see the fake dog.

I've legit been asked if I'm crazy before until people figure out we are training a dog.

scifihounds

PDF Drawings....

Client wanted do a small tenant improvement to their existing office space and had existing PDF drawings of the office building (floor plans, cross sections etc)

I quoted the client $2k for architectural permit plans which would include redrawing the existing PDFs in AutoCAD and then drawing the proposed plans.

Before I started the task of redrawing the PDFs, I had the idea...

I google searched "PDF to DWG converter"

To my surprise there were many softwares that did this type of conversion.

I managed to finish the entire project in about 5 hours.

2ezyo

The Googler....

Working In IT, getting paid to be a professional googler basically.

Fleedizz

I work IT at a university. Professors are very intelligent, but rarely know how a computer works. I go on calls and spend 30 minutes chatting with smart, interesting people while I run malware scans on their machines. I rarely have a difficult issue to fix, but I walk out of their office as a hero everytime.

morningsdaughter

Save and Print. 

I sometimes use Paint to alter screenshots of a technical drawings which I then paste into PowerPoint to add annotations and then print the whole thing into monochrome pdf. And you best believe we're changing big money for all of this. Also, we print every email.

Radioactdave

beep boop beep...

I'm doing a project right now that a drunk monkey could do with his hands tied behind his back.

Microsoft Excel copy paste copy paste beep boop beep...

Mattlenc

Thanks Warren.

Anytime a client takes me out for lunch or invites me to a golf or shooting tourney. but the craziest for me was when I was taken to a 4 hour "lunch" to a high end steak house on Warren Buffet's credit card. That was pretty dope.

Frekkes

"Remove horse genitals."

Probably the opposite end of the spectrum than intended but I work as a professional photo retoucher for a mid sized e-commerce site that focuses on women's clothing. So one day I was going through and editing lookbook images (meaning we outsourced a photographer, got a more expensive model, and shot on location), and in order to know which images we have a spread sheet which gives me an image number, a deadline, and editing notes which is something specific they want done to the image.

This is where things getting interesting. Im working my way through all of my edits when i come to an image number with a single editing note, "Remove horse genitals." Of course i think its odd and kinda funny but only expect to maybe have to remove a couple equine testes. So i open the image, the model in a field sporting a yellow fluffy coat walking a horse by the reins, and a massive, fully unsheathed, red rocket hanging low.

As I spent the next 5 minutes gingerly, and artfully, making sure this penis doesn't make it to the public I couldn't help but keep asking myself how the heck I'm being paid to photoshop away a horse's penis.

nachorykaart

Nice Legs...

I had to rub oil on a model's leg for a photoshoot. It was a positive "I can't believe I'm getting paid for this."

jaylowow