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There is a common belief that you have to be a stressed-out workaholic in order to make a decent living. But that's not always the case.
Two weeks ago, Reddit user u/rabahi made a post, asking: "What's a low-effort job with a surprisingly high salary?" And it has caught people's attention.
As of this article, the post has 16K upvotes and 6K comments, many of which have seriously caused people to consider changing their career path. Here are some of them.
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#1
I once had a job at a dog kennel and my job was to sleep In a bedroom with a dog or two, provided a comfy bed & Netflix/wifi. I was getting paid $30/hr to basically cuddle with dogs.
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#2
I worked as a massage “model” at a massage school. My job was to lay there and be massaged for a few hours while the students did their lessons or took their exams. It was £30 an hour which isn’t loads, but better than the £10 an hour office job I had before.
#3
In college I had to catalogue and convert old radio shows. I was literally paid to listen to old comedy shows. The actual 'work' was loading the reels and pressing a button.
Neat side effect is Looney Toons cartoons make more sense, I am getting more of the jokes, turns out they were just meme fests for their time.
I am most likely the only person under about 60 who has heard the entire run of "Fibber Mcgee and Molly’.
#4
My next-door neighbor works in a power station. His job is to sit in front of a monitor and make sure everything is working well. If something goes wrong, he calls the appropriate workstation and they fix the problem. Because an alarm sounds if something is out of sync (which rarely happens) he is able to play games or read a book 99% of the time. He is on $150 per hour to basically play games and chill at work.
Daniel (ShadowDrakken) 3 years ago (edited)
Keeping in mind though that should they fail at their one task, tens of thousands of people would be impacted in a bad way ;)
#5
I work at a heliport where I just get a couple of passengers' bags, put them on the heli, and then go and sit on my phone for however many hours until the heli gets back. Rinse and repeat. Roughly $70k
#6
Tour guiding.
I’m a water tour guide in Hawaii. I make 4 times what the average person my age makes. Half the time I’m chilling in the water or on the boat, the other half I’m a lifeguard, information dude, and boat flight attendant lol
Thank you, tourists!!
#7
I.T. Manager at a university. The techs know their jobs, their users, and manage their own schedules and workloads among themselves. Managers basically just have to rubber-stamp timecards, confirm parts orders, and make sure the techs don't all take vacations at the same time.
Daniel (ShadowDrakken) 3 years ago (edited)
This is what I love about IT... if you don't have garbage managers, being good at IT means having very little real work (because you build and maintain things in a way that gives you stability; you still need people for when the poop hits the fan)
#8
Vanna White's job on Wheel of Fortune. She gets paid $4 million a year walking back and forth in an area of 20 feet.
#9
If you can create the right software as a service business, it's basically free money. I licensed out a software I wrote to 2 large franchises and basically get paid $15K a month to stay home and ensure it's running 24/7
Robert T 3 years ago
But how long did it take you to write said software during which time you would be on zero income. And being on call 24/7 and by the sound of it the only person who can deal with it means that you aren't going to be going on holiday, at least not without taking all your gear with you.
#10
I do admin work for the Government. My pay is 55K. At best I get 5 emails a day with about 2 that actually concerns me. No B.S; my phone has rung about 20 times since June 1st. On a super busy day, I have about 45 mins worth of work to do.
#11
When I was backpacking I signed up to a temp agency in Sydney who would hire “well presented” front my of house staff for corporate firms who liked to have a pretty, young, well-dressed thing manning the reception desk whilst their clients came. I often got paid $30-40 an hour to welcome clients, show them to their meeting room, pour some water and order their catering. And that’s all I did. In fancy beautiful offices overlooking Sydney harbour bridge etc. Once their regular receptionist got back from leave I’d be popped onto the next one. I did a stint at Sydney University at one of their newly built research centres, all I did was direct people to the lifts and the right part of the building for their meeting. I made enough money doing this to backpack through the entire East Coast of Australia over 3 months.
#12
Trash truck drivers, it's a fairly simple job with a higher salary than being a teacher
#13
I had a job like this. I got paid $28 an hour working as an administrative assistant in a high school. It takes like 15 minutes to input grades and send truancy letters. Answering phone calls always resort to just transferring them to the Principal or school nurse. Literally, nothing to do. I left the job because there's no work in the summer (school is closed) and honestly, the environment was toxic. When you have that much free time at work, people want to start talking about their personal lives and I don't like to talk about mine to my toxic co workers. So I left. This job was the definition of money doesn't buy happiness.
#14
Business Intelligence/ Data analyst. Do you know how to use excel, can you write basically SQL, are you able to express yourself clearly and deal with getting variations of the same 10 questions for the rest of your career? Congrats welcome to making 100k.
Treessimontrees 3 years ago
Hmmm this is basically what I do. The fun days are when someone asks you to make the data say what they want it to say.
#15
Radiological control technician. 85k base 100k if you work 1 weekend a month and plenty earn 150k+.
I'm making $45 an hour right now browsing reddit and all I have for work today is 1 hour of tours. That's my work load. Doesn't really change
#16
International Pilot! I make $200k a year as a widebody first officer. None of the decisions fall to me, I fly one leg to Europe (I get a couple hour nap on each leg), I get 24-48 hours in a cool city, then I fly 1 leg home (couple hour nap again on the way home). When I'm home there is nothing I could conceivably do for work so I just get to enjoy my many many days off. Don't get me wrong the training was intense, but man, my job now is stupid easy.
Devil's Advocate 3 years ago
Until things go wrong and then you need to be awesome or hundreds can die. Air Crash Investigation last night was Air France flight 447, incompetent copilot who didn't have a clue what he was doing, stalled an Airbus A330 and belly-flopped into the ocean
#17
As a closed captioner broadcaster for the News, I work from home. I set my own hours and earn anything from $50 to $70 per hour, depending on the assignment. It takes a lot of money to get started, but the payoff is well worth it.
#18
Depends on where you live, but in my neck of the woods, firefighters get paid six figures and spend most of their time chilling. Of course, when you're called to work, you really got to work, and you don't get to just leave work to go home when your shift is over when [hell] goes down.
#19
Mobile notary that does home signings. They can line up 4-7 appointments in a day and make $200-300 per. One of the absolute best weekend gigs. In some markets you can pay your rent by working one extra Saturday a month.
DragonflyGreen 3 years ago
I'm a notary (can do online/electronic also) and the most my state permits me to charge is $20 to officiate a wedding. Not profitable in all places. 4-7 appointments in one day would at most net me $35.
#20
Call Center management. Not even something high up like operations or quality assurance, even being middle management can be lucrative. I've worked a few call center jobs, the people on the bottom absolutely get overworked, stressed out... but once you get to management it's easy.
Last call center job I worked, I got promoted to management just due to how long I had been there. After the promotion, I was paid 50K per year to sit at home, listen to people do their job, fill out paperwork and have the occasional web meeting. I spent more time playing video games and working out than anything else while on the clock.
The funniest part to me is that when I gave my notice, they tried to offer me a promotion to stay because I was such a hard worker. I was super tempted to laugh and tell them how little work I actually did in a day.
#21
Made $55 an hour supporting an American system... during grave-yard hours.
I was, literally, the only person in one of 3 huge buildings. All dark except for my lowly office.
For the first few nights, security would come around to see why the light were on all night...
I received no calls nor emails, ever, at any time. This lasted for 4-5 months. I slept most of the time, and, of course, got myself banned from sub-Reddits.
#22
In our country: A forklift driver.
Usually gets as much money as a person in middle management.
WilvanderHeijden 3 years ago
Isn't that with all people who have really learned a skill? There are many people out there who have trained for a pencil biting, paper pushing, white collar job. You'll have a much harder time finding a forklift driver, a welder, a carpenter, a plumber or a roofer.
#23
My current job. Project Manager for US Based Fortune 200 Company, permanent work from home, make six figures, and I do maybe 4 hours of actual work each week. I have my home office set up where I have 2 gaming monitors connected to my gaming laptop sitting on my desk directly in front of me. Then I have my work laptop sitting to one side that's got the volume turned up so I hear if I get an email or message. When I do, I handle that, then go back to my personal laptop. Most days I'm either playing video games, watching movies, browsing Reddit, studying for new certifications, or doing stuff around the house like laundry, dishes, cleaning rooms, food prep, etc. People on my team constantly say things like "Man, this workload is insane." I've got the same and even more than some. It's so boring. But, they're paying me to dick around most days.
#25
Truck Driver. Seriously, look into it. There is a huge demand for truck drivers right now, and I'm not talking the Amazon delivery guys. You can even get a local route and work regular work hours and make a lot of money for having the skill of driving.
Daniel (ShadowDrakken) 3 years ago
Ick, no thanks. Drove 29ft trucks for a Walmart POS replacement contract a while back. HATED IT! 11 hours of driving a day, 14 hour shifts, DOT record keeping while the company yells at you for not getting enough distance in (while also telling you they can't tell you to speed and they can't tell you to fudge your records, which is them really saying they require you to but that would be illegal). All for a whooping $740/wk... you can keep it.
#26
My job. The bulk of my job is essentially helping ICU nurses get through annual basic life support.
Now that it’s all on computerized dummies, I basically just click the link for them, adjust hand position now and then and sit back.
I watched Jurassic Park today because everyone is up to date.
I make $120k...
Sabs 3 years ago (edited)
An actual life support and CPR trainer should go through each step of the process (repeating each step a few times for practice) carefully and fully with the class and not sit back and allow the students to just work with the program. A good CPR program for new students usually takes 2 days, (usually a weekend) and a refresher course usually take 4-6 hours. Our hospital requires a full code blue drill to be completed after the training session before the staff are cleared to return to work.
#27
I have some relatives that work for the (US) Federal Government that often talk about jobs where they work in areas like Accounting and Project Management that make over $100,000 and might on a busy day have as much as two hours of actual work. My Aunt was talking about this one older women near retirement that made over $120,000 a year and her only job was running some transactions every morning, which usually took no more than 20 minutes, then she would spend the rest of the day knitting at her desk.
Daniel (ShadowDrakken) 3 years ago
To be fair, while the workload in a lot of those types of government jobs is pretty low, you're often fielding a lot of questions that require expert knowledge throughout the day still. And I've seen the workload PMs have, no thank you; project management is grueling.
#28
Driving the massive dump trucks that serve mines. Starting salary is like 70k and all you do is drive back and forth all day.
Devil's Advocate 3 years ago
Yes, but you have to be GOOD because your truck is worth A LOT, and it's quite boring
#29
School board members.
Don't know about other places, but school board members at my school (public school) made well over 5k eur a month (well above the average).
All the board ever did was create sh**ty rules and then remove them.
They always acted so damn busy when everyone knew they drank coffee while surfing Facebook the entire day, a school member's husband even said that so you know it's true.
#30
Cop. Where I am from they make $100, 000 annually with very little crime. Money is divested into new toys, like helicopters, tanks, even robots.
Southcentral L.A. it is not.
What do you think ?
Vicky Z 3 years ago
Exactly! You cannot stand doing nothing at your work! It's more tiring and you feel like working double hours!! The shift never ends!
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Samantha Lomb 3 years ago
I wouldn't want a job where I basically sat around and screwed about on my phone or computer. The days just drag like that. I would much rather be busy when at work. And busy with something meaningful and interesting
WilvanderHeijden 3 years ago
When you're in a position where you can play with your phone for hours and get paid extremely well, you also can afford to start online courses, though.
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Jo Choto 3 years ago
Some of these jobs are cool. But I have a really big problem for people who work in government bragging about doing nothing all day. Hardworking people pay taxes to support them. I would love for there to be some independent office of efficiency that could walk into any government office any time and log what people are doing. You could probably halve the number of government administrators and still have things run just fine. It's millions and millions a year in salaries that we pay for with our taxes, and these lazy reprobates think it's funny.
Ivana 3 years ago
It depends on the person. My boss posted for my former supervisor's position and I applied to it. I talked to my boss and told her that the work duties she had listed amounted to about 15 hours of work a week. I work a full 40 hours because it was never that there wasn't more work to be done, it was that the person who had the job spent 4 hours a day talking to everyone, had no clue what they were doing, and basically said that something that takes me 30 minutes at the end of the day took her 3 hours. There is a reason why she is my former supervisor, she was asked to leave but she was here for 4 years. Then she found a different job in neurosurgery and they quickly realized she was incompetent and she was forced into an early retirement. Over 20 years working for the state and the entire time she was always incapable but just kept bouncing around until she could retire. People hired her for her years of experience so we was always able to just go to a different department.
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Vicky Z 3 years ago
Exactly! You cannot stand doing nothing at your work! It's more tiring and you feel like working double hours!! The shift never ends!
Load More Replies... Samantha Lomb 3 years ago
I wouldn't want a job where I basically sat around and screwed about on my phone or computer. The days just drag like that. I would much rather be busy when at work. And busy with something meaningful and interesting
WilvanderHeijden 3 years ago
When you're in a position where you can play with your phone for hours and get paid extremely well, you also can afford to start online courses, though.
Load More Replies... Jo Choto 3 years ago
Some of these jobs are cool. But I have a really big problem for people who work in government bragging about doing nothing all day. Hardworking people pay taxes to support them. I would love for there to be some independent office of efficiency that could walk into any government office any time and log what people are doing. You could probably halve the number of government administrators and still have things run just fine. It's millions and millions a year in salaries that we pay for with our taxes, and these lazy reprobates think it's funny.
Ivana 3 years ago
It depends on the person. My boss posted for my former supervisor's position and I applied to it. I talked to my boss and told her that the work duties she had listed amounted to about 15 hours of work a week. I work a full 40 hours because it was never that there wasn't more work to be done, it was that the person who had the job spent 4 hours a day talking to everyone, had no clue what they were doing, and basically said that something that takes me 30 minutes at the end of the day took her 3 hours. There is a reason why she is my former supervisor, she was asked to leave but she was here for 4 years. Then she found a different job in neurosurgery and they quickly realized she was incompetent and she was forced into an early retirement. Over 20 years working for the state and the entire time she was always incapable but just kept bouncing around until she could retire. People hired her for her years of experience so we was always able to just go to a different department.
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