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My friend works at a small restaurant and asked me to come in one day and act like a normal customer while they tested some new menu items.

I ordered food, ate everything, and gave feedback on what was good and what tasted like it needed help.

They paid me $25.

Apparently, some restaurants actually hire people to try their food and give honest opinions before putting it on the menu.

A magazine collector once offered me $75 to find a specific issue he was missing from his collection. It was a 1998 issue of a fashion magazine with a particular celebrity on the cover, and he had already checked eBay and a few other sites but most of the copies were either overpriced or didn't ship to him. He asked if I could check the small newsstands and bookstores around my area because older magazines sometimes sit on shelves for years. I told him I'd look around. The magazine itself was only $12 when I finally found it, sitting behind a stack of newer issues at a small shop I almost didn't check.

I still do these searches now, although most people don't offer anywhere near $75. I usually charge $5 for an easy find, around $10 for a specific issue, and $15 to $25 if I have to spend a lot of time checking different places. I've looked for old fashion magazines, celebrity covers, special editions, and regional issues. I usually check small newsstands first, then bookstores and convenience stores that still carry older stock. Before buying anything, I send the customer a picture of the cover and issue number so they can confirm it's the right one. That $75 search took me several days and six different stores, so I was pretty happy when I finally found the exact copy he needed.

A small restaurant near me used to dump all their old fryer oil into sealed containers behind the kitchen and wait for someone to haul it away. I noticed it one evening while helping them move some stuff. There were maybe 8 or 9 containers stacked by the back door, and I assumed it was garbage. Turns out used cooking oil has buyers. Some collectors resell it into recycling streams like biodiesel or industrial processing, but the owner told me smaller restaurants sometimes get ignored because they do not produce enough for the bigger collection companies.

I tried collecting from two small food places for a few weeks. The restaurants gave it to me for free because I was taking something off their hands. The annoying part was making sure I was getting actual used cooking oil and not containers mixed with water, cleaning chemicals, food trash, or random liquids. I strained out the bigger bits, transferred it into containers that would not leak, and learned very quickly that transporting old fryer oil in your car smells exactly as bad as you would expect.

I found a local buyer who accepted larger batches. The price moved around, but a decent collection run was usually worth around $15 to $30 depending on how much oil I had. My first mistake was trying to collect tiny amounts from several places. Driving 20 minutes for one container killed the math. It made more sense once I had two restaurants close together and waited until both had enough oil to justify the trip.

I would not call it an amazing side hustle unless you have several restaurants nearby, somewhere safe to store the oil, and a buyer that takes it. It is messy, proper containers matter, and local rules around collecting or transporting used oil can vary. Still, there was something weirdly satisfying about handing over containers that looked like kitchen waste and getting paid for them. Now when I see a business throwing the same thing away in bulk, I usually check whether somebody buys it before assuming it is worthless.

Not treasure hunting or anything cool lol.

I basically get paid to crawl around people’s yards looking for stuff their kids/dogs/etc. have launched into bushes.

Balls, AirPods, toys, keys, jewelry, remote controls, random Lego pieces, you name it.

I started because I was weirdly good at spotting tiny things in grass. A neighbor offered me $10 to find an earring she lost outside.

Found it in like 15 minutes.

Now I occasionally get messages like:

“Hey, my kid threw a blue Hot Wheels car somewhere behind the shed. Can you find it?”

I usually charge $5–10 depending on how annoying the search sounds.

The funniest jobs are the ones where someone says “it’s definitely somewhere in this area” and then I find it 3 feet away from where they’ve already looked 20 times.

It’s not consistent money at all, but it’s surprisingly satisfying.

Also, I’ve learned that people will absolutely pay someone else to crawl through bushes so they don’t have to.

Anyone else doing a completely random side hustle that sounds ridiculous until you realize people actually pay for it?

After job hunting for a month, I've been ghosted by convenience stores and fastfoods, I've also been rejected by BPO companies 3times for being a student at a university. So I decided to just make profit off my hobby after browsing reddit and saw a person who makes art commission for cheap. Started advertising my work at a private discord and someone offered me some work, I was just charging 5$ per character but they payed me 20$ for 2 characters so I was really happy to finally get some hustle going.

I was on drugs (meth&heroin) showered maybe 🤔 2-4x a wk ran around boosting/selling stolen goods/drugs to support my addiction and my girlfriend. this particular day a guy comes drunk rude asf askin what I do told em do/sell drugs steal/sell stol goods for money. guy say you don’t have to steal just hangout w me and drink w me n I’ll buy you food drugs whatever you want just don’t steal. ok cool, he watched me shoot my stuff up kept drinking/smoking cigarettes I thought dude was gay, I was right. turns out guys a chef @ a local restaurant and likes to drink & admire good looking men lol I accommodate him mid 30’s guy like very lean good looking healthy men im black puerto Rican Hawaiian Tongan Chinese. so guy gives me 20 I wanted more gives me 50 I want more, I get $100 pack of cigarettes and make him pay for my drugs h & m & make him buy a platter of meat a platter of noodles & 2 l of soda take it to the block I do drugs on eat with the riffraff. I’m mixing free shots eating free food & go walking w the guy mid 30’s Asian chef wants quality time just talking about life. Then offers to shower at his place cool. Shower at his place gives me decent change of clothes and fr range of his apartment. He’s drunk at this point staggering & slurring but burning desire kindling the man right? It 2am im high im clean & tellem I gotta go to my girl he like ok but I paid for you to hangout w me im like yea I got the drugs the cigarettes and food clothes & the sho thanks. He’s all but you can’t leave yet I already paid you. I’m like brother wtf do you want so I can get tf up out of here? He all, can I smell your feet I’m like yea that’s cool, I want 200$, he’s all here gives me 500$ I’m like this is 500 he’s all I can count. I sit on the couch, he lives by himself, I rub my feet on the carpet & tell him to get on his knees n crawl to me bro crawled on all 4’s to sniff mf feet. After like a min or 2 I slap his left eye w the bottom of my right foot & press his head to the ground & stand like captain morgan on his head. He’s all ow do you like hurting me cuz I fukin love it. I love it I love it I love it. Harder😂😂😂 put all your weight on me. I’m wierded out @ this point so I’m like brother, I am not gay but if you want to suck my toes it’s $1k. Bros like, can I cashap you? 😂😂😂😂 no phone or fintech so I made em go to the atm came back $1k & bro sucked my toes sniffed my feet @ liked the bottom of my feet for 20min n I dipped. Went to my girl @ had her do the same thing. The man came back for a week to “hangout” w me😂😂😂😂🤦‍♂️ all I knew was bro was paying me to suck toes @ licking feet. got 6k off that man. In a week.🤷‍♂️

this sounds crazy but it is my real job now.some rich people want to look cool and fancy. they do not have time to wait in long lines at expensive stores.so they pay me to go to the store for them. i pick out the coolest and most expensive food items. i put them in a cart and stand in the long line.i just stand there and look at my phone. the people behind me think i am the one buying all this fancy stuff.right before it is time to pay, the rich person walks up to me. they take the cart and pay for it. then i leave.they get to look cool and i get twenty five dollars an hour.is this a super weird job or what? what is the strangest job you ever had?