Image by Exec8 (license CC BY-SA 3.0)
There are plenty of gigs on Craigslist, Upwork, and similar sites. Trying out some of the gigs they list offers some memorable and cringe-worthy moments.
I once worked as a mystery shopper. It was a relatively easy gig, although you needed to remember a lot of detail to get it done right. My first task was to call a popular fast food joint at midnight, and have specific items delivered to the house. If completed successfully, the company would pay me $7, plus reimbursement for the food I ordered. Sadly, I didn’t get paid for that gig. Why? I forgot to shine a flashlight on the delivery guy and write down his name.
Some of the most memorable gigs I’ve had involved working as a translator. It’s a gig that pays well, but the opportunities are hard to find. I found one of these ads on Craigslist. The guy who posted the ad was looking for a person to translate documents from English to two local languages. Plus, he needed someone to act as the narrator for the video he was producing. The translated documents would act as the script for the video. We had to shoot three videos, and we had to complete them in a single day.
“Being able to write and speak English fluently, is not a unique skill, it’s a necessity.”
The first task, translating the documents, was straightforward. I had relatives who could help translate the more complicated terms. When it came to the narrating however, let’s say I prefer holding the camera to being in front of it. The pay was $50 for each project, plus free food during the shoot. Not bad for a day’s worth of work.
I found another translation gig on a different website. The person who posted the ad was looking for somebody to translate a three day meeting for pastors. There was one group coming from the U.S., and another coming from Mindanao. They were meeting each other in a city in Manila. Each meeting lasted 8-11 hours.
The American pastors paid for everything: the hotel, food, and transportation costs. The rate for the translation gig was $11-$15 an hour. Approximately 30 percent went to the agent who recommended me to the client. The rest was mine. It may not sound like much, but in a country where the minimum daily wage is around $11, this was a Godsend. There have been similar opportunities, but nothing that paid anywhere close to those rates.
Finding translation work is difficult. Being able to write and speak English fluently is not a unique skill, it’s a necessity. Many businesses here provide customer support services, English tutorials, or article writing. If you’re looking for a job relatively quickly, these are some of the quickest routes.
Speaking of call centers, I’ve had my share of manning the phone lines when I was younger. I once answered an ad for a company that was looking for temporary agents. The project only lasted three weeks, but paid twice the rate of a regular agent. It was also during the school break. That meant I didn’t have to miss any classes.
What was the catch? We were taking calls during Christmas and New Year; the busiest times of the year. There were no weekends, holidays or days off of work. We needed to work for 21 straight days. Miss any work, for any reason, and you were out of the program. Come in late for work, and you were gone. If you were kicked out of the program, all you would get was approximately $11 for each day you were at the office.
I successfully managed to complete the project and get the full pay, but the stress took its toll. On the second to last day of work, I vomited several times on the way home. People assumed I was drunk, because of the bags under my eyes. Two months later, I landed in a hospital for a series of ailments. I wasn’t a regular employee of the company so I had to pay for everything myself. It’s a gig that takes more out of workers than what they get in return. I admire the people who’ve stayed there for years.
There are a lot more unusual gigs out there. If you’re lucky, you can become a game/app tester, a voice actor, an egg/sperm donor and more. It just depends on how open you are in trying out other gigs. In other words, how desperate are you to getting paid right now?
Stacey Gonzalez is a freelance writer and photographer based in the
Philippines. She is an avid traveler and enjoys watching horror movies,
especially Asian horror.
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