People Share The Craziest Things They’ve Done for Money

Would you chew a piece of gum from under a random table for $50. What about drink something that you are potentially allergic to? Well, some people have done ungodly things just to earn a buck. Is it worth it? To them, maybe. To most, probably not. But people sure are willing to find out…

After scouring the vast internet, we’ve learned of some of the craziest and most disturbing things that people have done for money. For some people, the allure of a stack of dollar bills is just too great, and they’d do just about anything to get their hands on that loot- even if that means doing something absurdly outlandish…

 I Got A New Profession

I was a little tipsy at a karaoke bar in Sydney a few years ago, running around the hallways for some reason. Two 30-something women told me they needed a stripper for their friend’s birthday, and they’d give me $200. So I walked into this brightly-lit karaoke room with 15-20 women sitting around staring at me in a semi-circle….

I didn’t even think about it and started undressing. I sang Radio GaGa to a wall of camera flashes, made a speech, and got the heck out of there. Reddit user: moyno85

I Pretended To Know Something I Didn’t

I tutored a guy in a subject I had no idea about. He ended up getting a 0/200 on his test the next day. I had tutored the guy in another subject before with pretty good results, but one day he asked me to teach him chemistry, a class that I had never taken….

I literally learned the material as I read it in his textbook with him. After he got his test score back, his parents never said another word to me, and they hired a professional tutor. Reddit user: 1709Bowen

 I Played A Song For $1000

I used to DJ at a club. One night, a few guys came in to cheer one of their friends up, as he had just buried his brother earlier that day. One of the guys comes up to me and says, hey, we’re about to buy this guy a dance, can you play Taps when he gets it, we’ll pay you $100….

As they’d already said once or twice, they were there to cheer him up; I said no, of course not. He goes back, has a brief conversation with the rest of his buddies, comes back, and says alright, $250. Again, I turn them down. Long story short, they kept coming back with higher and higher offers.

I finally caved at $1000 and played Taps while a guy who had buried his brother earlier got a lap dance from a stripper. The worst part was the look on the guy’s face the entire time. Don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Reddit user: Hollowbody57

I Ate A Glue Stick

I had a friend at school who was infamous for being “poor”; people used to get him to do stupid stuff for money, and he would go along with it. I doubt it was for the money, I think he more so just enjoyed the attention. Anyway, someone offers him $2 to eat a glue stick: one of the ones you wind up on the bottom, which leverages a cylinder glue ‘stick’ out the top….

He obliges and takes a big mouthful of glue. The teacher notices the commotion and asks why the heck he ate it, to which he shrugs and replies with his mouth full of glue, “It’s non-toxic?” Reddit user: Purewaters

I Peed In Someone’s Coffee

When I was a teenager, I used to hang out at this one coffee house a lot. There were always a lot of regulars there, so the atmosphere was pretty cool. This is where things get weird. After establishing myself as a regular, a man approached me and offered me $100 to “tinkle” in his coffee cup. I did it, and then he looked me directly in the eyes as he drank it. This happened several times….

This may sound gross to you, but I thought it was actually hilarious at the time. I don’t even regret it. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Pretended To Be A Woman

Back when I was in the situation–long hair, tight clothes–I was mistaken for a girl at a bar. A guy offered to buy me a drink, and I was underage at an all-ages show. I kept my voice higher until I got it, then I pushed my hair back and said, “Thanks, man!”

The guy was taken by surprise and decked me right there. Luckily, security was on that quick, but yeah, didn’t try that again. Reddit user: Puce_pachyderm

I Transported God-Knows-What

Lived in Los Angeles. I was handed $2,000 in cash, a Greyhound ticket to Vegas, and a car key. I was to get to Vegas, go to a specific hotel/casino, find a specific car in a specific lot, and drive it back to Los Angeles and leave it in a specific place. I would receive an additional $3,000 on my return….

I was not to attempt to look in the trunk. I was not to take anyone with me. I was not to make any stops along the way. I had 48 hours. I did it, no questions asked, and with plenty of time to spare. I did it three more times in six months, each under the same conditions….

I have plenty of ideas of what may have been in those trunks, especially knowing the people that were supplying the cash. Looking back now, I’m happy I never got caught. Reddit user: Hippygeek

I Was A Personal Assistant

I worked as a personal assistant for a 22-year-old who was in the midst of a psychotic breakdown. He hired me while at a mutual friend’s birthday party. He would have me go over to his apartment to heat up food before bringing dates home to trick them into thinking he had a butler….

He sent me on a two-day expedition to pick up a blown-up print of the movie poster for the Johnny Depp Willy Wonka movie. He had me research Spongebob episodes for some reason. Eventually, he decided to expand his ‘business’ and hired a bunch of Harvard students as interns and bought them all Powerbooks….

They just sat around all day in his kitchen day in and day out. It culminated in him taking us out for a night of debauchery, which ended up at a sleazy tattoo parlor, where he told us he’d give us money to tattoo his name on our bodies. And some of us did. The next day his mother visited, found out what was going on, froze his assets, and shut the whole thing down….

We found out later that he had formerly gone to Brown University, where he was expelled. But because his father was a judge, he got off. It was the weirdest summer of my life. I made about $3,500. Reddit user: Snowleaf

I Planted Evidence

I was once offered some money to break into someone’s house with the intention of planting incriminating evidence on a guy’s hard drive in an effort to get his girlfriend to break up with him. I happily accepted. The goal was for my employer to subsequently swoop in and steal her….

The funny thing was, I didn’t even need to implant the fake stuff I had brought; the guy already had some pretty weird stuff on his hard drive, so all I had to do was make copies and leave them in a conspicuous place. Reddit user: RandianHero

I Pretended To Be A Baby Bird

At some camp I went to, this guy was there, and he had his own little YouTube gig going on, and he’s handing out twenties like no big deal as long as people do whatever he asks. He picks two random people (me and some tall dude), and he says we have to play “Bird”….

It’s a game where person A sits down and tilts their head back, mouth open, and person B has to spit water down while standing way above them. If person A catches it, they both win. No shame. When you’re 13 years old, $20 goes a long way. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Broke Up Someone’s Engagement

I once let a very wealthy man pay me to break up his granddaughter’s engagement to a guy he didn’t like. The girl was attractive, and I would have gladly done it for free. The girl was the heiress to a large hotel/shopping center fortune in the Midwestern US. We grew up together, and she was best friends with my sister for a long time….

She starts dating a guy that the grandfather doesn’t like. The grandfather (who runs the family business) approaches me at a formal dinner, takes me aside, and tells me that he hates his soon-to-be grandson-in-law. He offered me a sum in the low 6 figure range to ruin the engagement. And I agreed….

I started showing up at the girl’s apartment once a week, unbeknownst to the fiance, to plant false information and incriminating evidence of an affair. It eventually led to the engagement being broken off, and I collected a BIG payday. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Cleaned Skin Flakes

I used to help my dad’s friend clean cars on weekends. He did the exterior while I did the interior. One day I go inside a car, and it looks like there is snow everywhere. In some places, it was about two inches thick, but it was everywhere throughout the entire car….

I have no idea what it could be, so I am cleaning and cleaning, doing a very thorough job. When I am finally done, the owner appears. He is morbidly obese and covered in scaly flakes of skin all over his body. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Pretended To Be A Woman…Again

Once upon a time, I was a feminine young teenaged boy who had long hair and paired skinny jeans with big winter jackets. Sometimes people thought I was a girl. Once, after a long day of exhausting work, I sat down on the bus (11:45 at night), and this guy sits down a few seats back. In a tipsy tone, he says, “Hey, wassup….”

I nod at him. About half-way to my house, he moves into the seat right behind me and leans over. “Hey, you alright, darling?” At this point, I realize he thinks I’m a girl, and I don’t want to freak him out by talking with my obviously male voice, so I just say a meek, “Yeah.” He nods and sits back down in his own spot. About 30 seconds before my bus stop, he gets up, moves to the seat behind me, looks around quickly, and puts a $100 bill next to me, then goes back and sits down….

I look at him, utterly shocked, and he gives me this sly smile and nods as he motions me towards him. Obviously, I took the money and got off the bus. I didn’t actually DO anything, but I still felt pretty weird. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Pretended To Be Deaf

When I was in high school, I had a job going door to door selling newspaper subscriptions. Our “boss” paid us under the table while giving us a clipboard with an official-looking flyer describing how we’d get college credits for every newspaper subscription we sold. It fooled a lot of people….

Then, one day, I decided since I’m already lying to these people, I’d step it up a notch. I pretended to be deaf for a week when going up to houses. Made $500 for about 10 hours of work. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Lied About My Soccer Team

One time in junior high, a group of friends and I came up with a pretty shady scheme. We all played soccer together and decided to go around door to door, claiming to be raising money for the team. We wore our full gear and made up a story about not having enough funds to keep the team going….

After about an hour we had near $200. We went back to the ring leader’s house and ordered 10 pizzas, but I felt so bad I went home before they arrived. I told my older brother about it, and he thought it was hilarious, but he hated my friend who came up with the whole thing…

So he called his mom, pretending to be a disgruntled neighbor, exposing everyone that was over at his house. They all had to go back to each neighbor and apologize and offer to do chores to make up the money they took. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Dressed Up Like A Chicken

Dressed as a chicken and walked around a theater foyer waving at kids. I needed someone to lead me because the chicken head was made for a taller man than me, and all I could see through the mesh in the beak was the top half of the room…

Not easy money. I was dressed as a sponsor’s mascot for a children’s charity performance and got headbutted in the crotch by a six-year-old coming in for a hug below my sightline. Reddit user: I_throw_socks_at_cat

I Ate A Jar Of Mayo

I once ate a whole (32 ounces) jar of mayo on a bet. An online forum I used to frequent had a thread where people were just pledging random sums of money to the first person who could consume a whole jar of mayo and then post the video on Youtube….

I did it in around 5 minutes. I made 280 bucks off of the deal, and it was totally worth it. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Took A Dead Man’s Tooth

Hammered the gold off a dead guy’s teeth. Oh god, the smell. Never again. I’m a goldsmith, and while I was in school, I was going to make something for someone who had their own gold, including some grandfather’s teeth with gold on them. You have to crush the teeth to get the gold off.

I was nowhere near the actual guy, only his teeth. I’m sorry, I was desperate. Reddit user: Josephine Ryan

I Touched Something Hot

You know how in elementary school playgrounds or parks there are slides that are made of metal and get extremely hot in the sun? I once was bet to keep my hand on it for 20 seconds and a kid would give me $5. It was the middle of the day, but the $5 had my name written all over it.

I won the $5, but my hand was slightly burned for a couple days. I was not a smart 3rd grader. Reddit user: Hostile_workplace

I Ate Month-Old Pizza

I ate a month old slice of pizza that sat outside in a hallway for $40 and a $5 beer token to a local bar. The pizza was rock hard. I had to dip it in water like an Oreo to even be able to take bites and chew it. I was wicked drunk when I ate it, so it wasn’t that bad, and I was able to take it like a champ. I thought it was the easiest cash I ever made until the next day when I went snowboarding.

I had the worst case of bubble guts and diarrhea. I ended up having to stop on nearly every run, pulling off the mountain and into the woods in order to relieve myself. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Drank Hot Sauce

I drank a two-ounce cup of hot sauce because I needed lunch money. Of course, I was tricked. It was actually a sauce made with Carolina Reaper Peppers (one so powerful the bottle apparently had a warning label that said it was hazardous and illegal to give to someone without telling them how strong it was)….

He had obtained it from a friend who worked at a pepper farm. Well, I ended up vomiting up any possible solids that were in my stomach, and I had to climb the stairs up to the nurse’s office sweaty and with blurred vision (the elevator requires a key to use, so I had to walk despite being on the verge of blacking out)….

I had to take the bus home, in which I almost called an ambulance because I was in so much pain. I had about two days of terrible stomach pain, and I made two bucks. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Ate Hot Dogs… Whole

When I was a child, in the summers there was a “Daily Vacation Bible School” thing that happened for all the poor kids to be taken care of for a week and preached to. We were eating lunch one day, and a counselor discovered me taking my hot dogs out of the bun and swallowing them whole….

It was something I’d learned to do because I loathed hot dogs but couldn’t turn down food. He got his friends together, and they paid me 50 dollars, a 12 pack of Mountain Dew, and 5 Snickers bars to watch me swallow 5 raw hot dogs whole….

Nobody spoke to me for the rest of the week, and I had no idea why. But I did receive dirty/sly looks until it was over. Reddit user: Dudeicca

I Was Part Of A Study

In college I was paid $100 to participate in a study that measured my brain activity; it involved placing this net-like thing with a bunch of sensors that was dripping with a cleaning solution on my head and face while I reacted to things and answered questions that popped up on a computer screen….

I had to walk from the bottom floor to the third floor with this thing on my head and a large rain slicker twice each session (once after having it put on and once to go back to have it removed). Reddit user: Dr_ZombieCat_MD

I Acted Like A Donkey

We once paid a friend to act like a donkey. He is quintessentially British, dignified as heck, with shiny shoes, tidy uniform/blazer, etc., and carefully styled hair. And for about 20p, we managed to have him on the floor on all fours (in his expensive clothes), making donkey noises….

I’d just like to emphasize for our American friends; this is 20p. Not 20 dollars. Not 20 pounds. 20 pence. That’s 28 cents. For 28 cents, a 16-year-old grammar school boy pretended to be a donkey. Reddit user: The_Fith_Elephant

I Played The Fiddle

When I was in middle school, kids used to pay me a dollar to go sit at their friends’ tables during lunch. I would sit there awkwardly grinning until they noticed me, whereupon I would say “Hi!” then suddenly jump up onto the table and play an air fiddle (making fiddle noises with my mouth, of course)….

I did this all while jumping around in a circle for around 15-30 seconds, making as big of a scene as I could. I have NO IDEA how this got started, but I quickly got a reputation as some kind of humiliation fiddler for hire, and for a good two or three weeks, my services were in high demand….

In the end, I made about twenty bucks. It was a ton of money back in the day, and I was the happiest I’d ever been. That’s what I call easy money! Reddit user: [redacted]

I Fell Over

During study hall in high school, some friends were looking for entertainment, and I, for a dare, agreed I would fall backward in a wooden chair and crash onto the ground. About four times, I tipped back, nearly falling, until I finally pushed forcefully enough to throw myself over and slam onto the ground….

The collision startled the entire class, but no one suspected any foul play. My friends thought it was hysterical, and so did I, only I became $4 richer at the cost of a sore back. Reddit user: cakemonster

I Ate A Spicy Pepper

I once drank a milkshake made with a Carolina Reaper pepper in it. For those of you who don’t know what Carolina Reaper peppers are, THEY ARE HOT. I was a production assistant for the TV show Fear Factor. It was my first Hollywood job. For some stunts, producers would offer a cash bounty to test them before they were used in the show….

If there were no volunteers, they would raise the bounty. I got $400 for drinking the milkshake. It wasn’t worth the money. I ended up vomiting for hours and almost went to the hospital. Due to my reaction, they switched the stunt to drinking four shot glasses of a habanero milkshake for the actual TV segment….

It still made the contestants vomit. None of them were able to finish the stunt, and the episode never aired because no one could win. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Killed Rats

I was kind of a weird kid growing up. For example, some friends and I used to go to a local junkyard and kill the rats. Eventually, the owner of the place found us out, and rather than scold us, he offered us 10 cents per rat that we killed. They were apparently a big issue for him….

All we saw was money that summer. This was back in the ’70s, so we all grabbed our pellet guns, wrist rockets, and tons of marbles. We put duct tape around our ankles and went to work just standing on the tops of trash piles. We’d kill as many as possible, then scoop them up and line them up for the count at the end of our hunt….

We had so much fun, and yeah, it was morbid at first, but there were so many rats that we really never made a dent in the population. That being said, we made good money and financed our summers with it. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Ate Weird Things

My friends dared me to eat a fist-sized pinecone for $5. I surprisingly made it 2/3 of the way through it before the taste became too much. They also dared me to eat the cob part of corn on the cob. I made it 3/4 of the way through. The last 1/4 was incredibly tough. I could not possibly chew through it….

My friends were a few years older than me and got a lot of laughs out of the crazy things I attempted to do for money over the years. Reddit user: ConstableReggie

I Sniffed A Fresh Fart

Not me, but this is something I witnessed at work. There’s this lad that has terrible farts…I mean, TERRIBLE, like the smell just spreads everywhere. So much so that we made him do his farts on the pallet drop away from our workspace. Anyway, one morning there’s loads of talk going on….

I listen in, and I overhear that one guy has to sniff the seat for 20 seconds straight after it’s been farted on by death fart guy. Reddit user: mentallyhandicapable

I Ate Sugar

Ate a small bowl filled with sugar and honey. Friend said he’d do it for five bucks. I underbid him and said I’d do it for a weird, random number. I think I said like $3.34. I was kind of just messing around, but then the rest of my friends agreed to it, so I followed through. I got a major sugar rush from it….

I’m actually pretty lucky that that’s all that happened to me. I almost put myself into diabetic shock once before that. Reddit user: GhosdudePCptnAlbino

I Used My Feet

A friend of mine knows a guy who has a strange ability to profit off other people’s love of feet. He got paid 2000 bucks to travel 400 miles and trample on a naked dude’s body with his bare feet for 30 minutes. He also once tried to sell a pair of shoes on eBay….

Some guy wrote him a message asking how old exactly the shoes are, how sweaty they are, etc. He then offered him 150 bucks to wear them for another month and then send them to him. Reddit user: Dr-Sommer

 I Ate A Live Spider

In 7th grade gym class, we were taking roll on the gym floor (probably 60-70 kids in this class), and a random spider the size of a quarter just walks by me as the roll is being called. I look behind me to my buddies and go, “I’ll eat this spider for money.” Three kids totaled $12, and next thing you know, I’m downing a live spider in the middle of gym class….

And might I tell you, dudes, to never do or attempt this; the spider’s legs were absolutely awful. I swear I felt those things in my throat for weeks after that. Reddit user: Octose

I Scratched A Back

When I was younger, my brothers and I would always massage or scratch our dad’s back, legs, butt, and feet for money. And we called it ‘doing his back.’ He bribed us so many times, saying he would let us do something or get something only if we did his back….

Oh goodness…the memories of being in a supermarket or something and wanting a toy, yelling, “I WILL DO YOUR BACK IF YOU BUY ME THIS.” We were a strange family. Reddit user: chairinthesky11

I Collected Email Addresses

I downloaded a list of about 2 million email addresses from a torrent site and posted it on Craigslist, trying to sell it to email marketers. I made about $200. The torrent with the emails was 3 years old; the person who bought it said it had an under 5% success rate….

He also said that his ISP apparently blacklisted him from ever using an email service again due to mass spam. I got paid, so I didn’t care. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Sold A Glitter Card

I sprinkled glitter on the edges of a pretty useless card and convinced someone it was an incredibly valuable card, as evidenced by the fact that the glitter is so obvious. She bought it from me. I was so happy that I got the money that I considered doing it again to someone else….

Granted, I think we were both in second or third grade, but I felt like such a pro for duping her. I couldn’t find a second card to do it to. Reddit user: ohbubbles

I Handed Out Flyers

I handed out flyers in Times Square. It’s like getting rejected by the entirety of New York in under an hour, the worst being tourists who ask for directions and still refuse to just take a measly piece of high glossy paper that I know you’re just going to throw away the second you make it to the next corner….

I am 100 percent sure that I didn’t influence one person to go to the show I was promoting, and 50 percent sure that those who did take a flyer did it out of pity or necessity to create filters for jays. I was supposed to do it for an entire week, but when I saw an elaborately dressed, holographic Charizard of a female Chicago promoter do an elaborate dance and still couldn’t hand out a flyer, I realized I was hopeless.

So I went home, said I passed out sixty, and reevaluated my life. I never attempted to give out another flyer in my entire life. Reddit user: [redacted]

I Did Someone’s Homework

I wrote a paper for a girl once, and she paid me $50. She ended up failing because it was clear (based on her other papers) that she had no hand in writing it. Despite her failing, I refused to refund the money b/c the service had been rendered. It was her fault that she didn’t set the guideline I should have followed….

Fast forward 12 years, and that same girl is engaged to my cousin. Once the two of them started dating, she stopped holding the grudge, and I became her second favorite person. Reddit user: BenDisreali

I Talked To A Guy

I sat on a webcam and talked to a guy in the Netherlands about how much of an “obese American” I was. Occasionally I would eat a McDonald’s burger on cam, just because he wanted me to. We had frequent dates, and he would pay me $20 to talk to him for 10 minutes…

I paid my rent, utilities, and internet bills last summer just from talking to him every day. It was the weirdest and easiest money I had ever made. Reddit user: iwantanewme

I Ate Burned Green Beans

I was at a family dinner, and my uncle complained that my aunt burnt the green beans. As a joke, he said he would pay anyone $50 to eat the whole bowl. He did not expect me to take him up on the offer. This was a dinner bowl meant for like 14 people….

So that night I didn’t eat an actual dinner, just an obscene amount of green beans. Surprised I didn’t barf; I had interesting, weird bowel movements for the next 2 days, though. Reddit user: KingSolomon1027