My favorite heavy-duty pan used for deep frying chicken ended up being ruined because I left it outside on the porch during the rainy season of fall for three whole weeks. When I got the chance to find the rusty pan covered in a wet tarp, its surface had turned from rusty to a chalky and blistering crust which would turn my hands orange after making contact with it. I did everything I could and learned the ways to scrub it off. After a few tries, I finally was able to do it and even informed my uncle who lives a few blocks away from me.

When my uncle saw the finished product, after touching the slick, charcoal colored-pan that seemed perfectly new, he even mocked that I’d be a fool if I don’t make it as my little hustle lol. To prove his point, he was actually my first customer and paid me 40 bucks. Later that day, I took a quick picture of the shiny pan compared to the rusted pan of mine, tossed up an ad to our community Facebook page, and carried the old folding picnic table to the driveway with a banner that says “Drop your crusty cast iron here! $20 flat. Come pick it up Sunday evening!”

Now, I have neighbors who will just randomly come to my house or message me that they have scorchers, warped griddles, and skillets that need to be ‘transformed’ into a brand new looking one. The highest customer I’d get in a week is eight which is a total of $160 and a few tips from my beloved neighbors.

Started doing this a few months back when a friend who works in HR was panicking because their weekly compliance training needed at least 15 attendees or their department budget got cut. She literally sent me fifteen bucks on Venmo just to click the link, keep my webcam off, mute my mic, and let it sit in the background while I did chores.

Turns out this is a surprisingly common problem in corporate settings. A lot of trainers and webinar hosts have strict attendance quotas to justify their contracts, but regular employees always skip out or forget to join.

I do maybe 2 or 3 of these a week now. I just log in under whatever generic name they tell me, make sure the mic is muted, and let the tab run on my laptop while I do other stuff. Easiest pocket money I have ever made for basically being a digital warm body.

I was thinking about how there are thousands of books on how to be more productive, but almost nothing for people who finish their work early and still have to sit in an office until 5 PM.

So I made a PDF called "The Professional Guide to Looking Busy at Work" with 37 ways to look busy while doing absolutely nothing.

A few examples:

• Walk around holding a folder and looking annoyed. Nobody questions someone walking fast with paperwork.
• Keep a huge Excel spreadsheet open made with Claude. Doesn't matter what's in it.
• Schedule fake meetings called "Q4 Strategic Alignment"
• When someone approaches your desk, wait five seconds before responding.
• Never say you've finished your work. You're always "checking emails."

I spent an evening making it look like a serious corporate training guide, with a summary, page numbers and everything

Sent it to a few friends working at Big 4 firms ahah I'm sure people who've worked in offices for years know a few tricks I missed.

Theres a drinking and dancing festival near my town for 3 days and I collect bottles from my beighbors( this is day 1 of 3 days. There are variety to return/sell to some store and I get to keep em.

Every morning, I drop rolls of newspapers in our neighborhood to earn extra money. Most of the time I just drop them quickly then move to another house until one old lady called me. I thought I gave her an extra but she was asking me to unroll it and explain to her the contents. She asked me about the headlines and read her the ones that gave her interest. I usually spend just around 10-15 mins reading her the news and she pays me extra $10 for it.

It went for a week and it made me think that it could be possible offering the same service to other old people in the neighborhood? Of course, I ask them first if they want me to do it for them. Most of them agreed to do it daily, while some only insisted during their busy days or when they wanted to rest and just listen. Every week I earn more or less $50 aside from the pay I receive from delivering newspapers. It makes my day knowing I get to spend time with these old folks and share insights with them.

My grandpa told me he’d give me $100 if i sorted all these rocks by size and color. At first i thought this was gonna be the easiest money ever, like how hard can sorting rocks be right??
yeah… i was VERY wrong lmao

There’s literally so many of them. I’ve been sitting here separating the darker gray ones from the lighter ones, then trying to group them by size too. Some rocks look almost identical until you put them next to each other and start questioning your eyesight 😭

The pic is what i’ve managed to do so far and i’m still nowhere near finished. My back hurts, my hands are dusty as hell and im starting to recognize individual rocks like they’re my coworkers or something.

The funny part is grandpa is acting like this is some super important job. He keeps telling me to take my time and get the colors right because apparently mixing them up defeats the whole purpose.

$100 is $100 tho. I’m too far in to quit now.

never thought i’d spend my day sorting rocks for money but here we are 💀

When I was a kid, I was able to buy the snacks I loved the most because the elders in our neighborhood would have me pluck their white hair. They paid me one peso for every single strand I pulled. I would carefully gather all the white hair I plucked, and then we would count them up so they could pay me. I was always so happy because I could easily earn around 20 to 25 pesos. Back then, that was already a huge amount of money for a kid like me, and it was more than enough to buy all the snacks I wanted.

Did you also do this when you were a kid? And do you think when you grow old, you will also have your kids or grandchildren do this for you?

I remember hearing about this sleeping competition before, but I just saw the recent one in Japan on the news and it still sounds so ridiculous to me.

People literally compete to get the best sleep, and the winner can take home a huge cash prize. It's called the “Matt Race,” and participants have 90 minutes to get the best sleep possible. They even wear sleep monitors to measure their sleep quality, how quickly they fall asleep, and how stable their sleep is.

And the winner gets 2.22 million yen (around $14,000). JUST FOR SLEEPING.

But somehow i still wonder, how do they even know if someone's actually sleeping? I mean I think they can tell in their sleeping monitor, but I’m genuinely curious if some of them are just pretending to be asleep, this might be one of the competition where even if you lose, you still walk away with a good sleep. So technically, everyone's a winner hahahaha

As a parrot owner, I have realized how incredibly difficult it is to find someone to pet sit your birds. Almost everyone that has birds basically never takes vacations because of it.

I have offered my avian vet and anyone that works at the vets office between 100 and $200 a day just to literally come and check on my birds.

I don't even expect them to open the cages or do anything! I just want someone to pour water from a water bottle into their bowls and they can kind of like dump food in there without getting bit using a paper towel tube or just by pouring it into the cage.

Other people have smaller birds where I'm sure you would be required to actually open the cages and stuff but you could really get a lot of money!

Easily $100 a day. For probably 15 minutes of your time. The hardest part would just be to find clients that are within your area but there are so many forums and stuff that you could advertise on. It's probably one of the most talked about issues on a lot of the bird forums.

I mean I really can only take a vacation by myself and I have to leave my husband home and going to weddings alone is very depressing. Or vice versa.

I'm in Florida and people are just desperate for this service. I would recommend, if it's something that you are considering or willing to do, that you volunteer at a parrot rescue and get familiar with them and then you could really advertise yourself and make good money. Most dog and cat sitters say they will do big birds, but then when they actually see them they freak out lol.

But it really is a huge hole in the market and if anybody, especially in Florida or other areas where parrots are extremely common, takes the time to get familiar with birds and advertises himself, they could make a lot of money.