Crazy Job Postings Part II

[#1]

Most of you already know the drill here, but if not........

Folks, feel free to share crazy job postings you see. I've been wanting to create a thread like this for a while, and think it would be fun of we can keep it updated periodically.

Warning: Do not copy paste a job description, do not include a link to the post, or client details. Keep it within forum post guidlines!

Not sure what those guidelines are? Go here: https://community.upwork.com/t5/Announcements/Upwork-Community-Guidelines/td-p/3/jump-to/first-unrea...

[#2]

Yeah but even if he was going to pay you, which we all know he won't, do
you really want to wait tables at Mar a Lago?

[#3]

soo... I just saw this...
client is willing  to pay  higher rates - for expert designers. higher rate means $20 fixed  price budget (now - that's a nice budget...really...), job desciption is one sentence - he needs  "very designed" logo
I'm still trying to understand what that means...

[#4]

As opposed to a not very designed logo which is what he's budgeted for.
Very designed is where you really open adobe actual illustrator and draw
very hard and then totally save it as a whole entire pdf. And then truly
ignore his stupid edits where he completely changes everything about what
you did (but it's the same logo because he really likes it) and then fully
get him to really pay you very soon and leave him a very bad review.

Or maybe he meant "Avery" designed logo using Avery's instant logo designer
template.

[#5]

I saw a job for a content writer at $1 per 1000 words - and "do not reply if you will not work for this rate". Factor in the cost of your Internet connection and power for your laptop and you'd probably find you're paying for the privilege of doing this job.

[#6]

Ah kin rat sum reel gud contint fer a hole doller?
An ah git wun ever tam ah rat a thouzin werds?
OOOOWEEEE!!! Weez eetin tanight kidz!

Whut werd do ah heff ta rat?

[#7]

Do a search right now for "Wate Loss Receipt Riter", only correct my spelling (should be obvious). It's all I can do not to bid just to say to the client "seriously"? I hope to high heaven no one takes that job.

[#8]

Search for "kids mobile games". This is a translation of a mobile game for a fixed price of 60$. 4 Excel sheets with 100-160 rows, something around 10k words and even more (plus, incredibly confusional xslx sheets).

A mobile game for kids is supposed to be educational and error-free (=you need quality over all) and the client is not even asking for the usual slave rate, it's lower than half the slave rate. Proposals? From 10 to 15. I mean, how the hell is this even possible :facepalm: ? Just use Google Translate at this point and you'll have better results.
Flagged for free work 

[#9]

I think what happens is novice clients come to the site thinking it's a
freelancer centric organization and they are going to find lots of
untrustworthy car mechanic types who will rip them off. At that point the
freelancer stops being a human being with dignity and instead is seen as
the opponent. Since they have no idea what anything is worth they put the
budget as low as possible thinking they might get lucky. Or they are the
unscrupulous scalawags they appear to be. That's my theory.

[#10]

Interesting perspective (always good to attempt to be kind as possible). There does seem to be a certain percentage of the client population though who mistakes Upwork as a site equivalent to Fivrr and expect to get thousands of dollars worth of work by experts for $5.

It would be great to filter out the predators and create a freelancer community where our work is respected, and professionals want to hire professionals. Sigh! Call me a dreamer.

Suzi

[#11]

Yeah Suzi, I agree there are some of those. They fall into the latter category I mentioned. It would be nice to have a site where at least all the good jobs aren't skimmed off the top by an elite group who won't let anyone else in and guard those jobs like a squirrel guards his nuts...What? Okay acorns! Seriously though I know these tech brats aren't better than me (because no one is) so they are simply a clique of young white t-shirt, black dinner jacket on a skateboard types you see all over San Francisco these days now that the bridge toll mafia has taken over the northern access routes and their parents paid to secure them positions that allow them to crank out mediocre work with total confidence because the clients don't know the difference anyway and that's why we have design trends like "flat design" a style born of inadequate drawing skills that gained popularity by being unthreatening to the unskilled or the "butted-bold-plain" style of logo design where anyone can design a super-hip wordmark by simply doingthis.com. OMG is that domain untaken!? Uh, I gotta go! 

[#12]

Just saw this: For $5 fixed price.

Seeking an experienced grant writer for disposable medical device. Unique start-up team of professionals including chief of surgery of major teaching institution. Need someone who is comfortable and has a background in medical or healthcare arena

Um...that's like 12 cents an hour for the amount of work (or less). 

[#13]

re: "Just saw this: For $5 fixed price..."

Okay.

But as has been said before, $5 fixed price is often a place-holder. A default value for clients who don't know what to put.

Along with many others here in the Forum, I have earned hundreds or thousands of dollars from individual $5 fixed-price job postings.

[#14]

They are trying to create new patients. They want to practice their new
surgical treatment for aneurism. Stay calm. Be happy in knowing that the
"experienced grant writer" they hire will waste their time and they will
never get the money for their disposable device. (Just what our oceans and
landfills need, more disposable medical devices!) Or maybe it's a cheap
wedding ring because they left so many of them in their patient's abdominal
cavities the figured they might as well make them disposable. You know,
this job is sounding more attractive by the minute. The comedic
possibilities are endless.

[#15]

(Fixed price: $30)

The project should take no more than 10 hours to complete, and I am willing to pay $3 per hour. 

It is possible that the project may take only 5 hours, so I am being very generous here.

Hahaha

[#16]

Liliath P wrote:

(Fixed price: $30)

The project should take no more than 10 hours to complete, and I am willing to pay $3 per hour. 

It is possible that the project may take only 5 hours, so I am being very generous here.

Hahaha

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Maybe the job is to drive his new Lamborghini around town and dine at fancy restaurants for ten hours with an unlimited expense account. But if it's anything involving sitting in front of a computer punching keys then say:

"Dear Mr. Giver, I would never want to take advantage of your supreme generosity so how about if I take 100 years to complete your job then you only have to pay .000001 cents per hour.  I'll need a 100% deposit to start though and the contract is void when either of us dies.

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[#17]

Skill tests have been removed from our profiles, so why is this question allowed: "Have you taken any Upwork tests and done well on them that you think are relevant to this job?"

[#18]

Wait, wait... What can be more ridiculous than this? I just received one of those e-mails "Sergio, here are 12 new jobs you may be interested in." One of them is a featured job, a very attractive long-term position but when I tried to see more details I ended up in this screen:

"Access denied: This job is private. Only freelancers invited by client can view this job."

Give me a break!

[#19]

I've had that. Not only is it annoying but it also shows that there are a
group of "chosen" freelancers skimming all the best jobs off the top.
Upwork pro or something like that. (Like after 20 years in business and
100s of 5 star ratings here, I'm not a pro) but there is no way to audition
for this status and get access to the non-BS jobs. Because they keep them
all to themselves and probably aren't very good freelancers either
otherwise they would play fair. I dont believe that 9 out of ten clients
are complete flakes wanting something for nothing and unable to communicate
their most basic needs. I believe we are simply getting the bottom of the
barrel clients that no one wants. I've been in business for a long time and
it has never been this dismal.

[#20]

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Ray C wrote:
I've had that. Not only is it annoying but it also shows that there are a
group of "chosen" freelancers skimming all the best jobs off the top.

Actually, what it shows is that invitation only jobs work exactly the way they are described in the Upwork help materials, and some clients choose to use them.

Upwork pro or something like that. (Like after 20 years in business and
100s of 5 star ratings here, I'm not a pro) but there is no way to audition
for this status and get access to the non-BS jobs. Because they keep them
all to themselves and probably aren't very good freelancers either
otherwise they would play fair. I dont believe that 9 out of ten clients
are complete flakes wanting something for nothing and unable to communicate
their most basic needs. I believe we are simply getting the bottom of the
barrel clients that no one wants. I've been in business for a long time and
it has never been this dismal.

---

I can't speak for anyone else, but I've gotten nearly all of my Upwork clients through public job postings. I don't consider any of my clients bottom of the barrel--I've reached 5% fees with several of them. 

[#21]

I don't take the other nine. the 1 out of 10 clients i do take are great
but i have to weed through a lot of bad ones to find them, hence this
thread.

It's pretty hard to get to 5% in design jobs that aren't programming. And
when you look at the state of a lot of graphic design out there you realize
that quality artwork is not valued like it used to be. A lot of people
settle for mediocre work and they call it stuff like flat design, used to
be grunge. It's just an excuse because they have no skill.

It's the same in other industries like music as well. Arts and culture
programs are no longer funded in schools like they were in the past and the
overall quality of many arts have suffered.

Tech is all anyone cares about and there are some great advances in tech
but a lot of it falls short because the design aspect is weak. As a big fan
of the old cartoons, I first noticed this trend when i was five. I didn't
want to watch the new Popeye and Bugs Bunny cartoons. Everyone said: "Oh
these are more modern." But i wasn't buying it. It was commercial
mass-produced garbage.

I watched the entire animation industry get worse and worse until finally
they came out with South Park in which the art is as awful as it can be.
Everyone said: "oh they purposely did it that way because its funny." They
saved a lot of money not having to hire real artists is all they did.

20 years ago no one would be so disrespectful as to ask a designer to work
for 5 dollars. These same people would own slaves if it were legal. I don't
know what these people are thinking but maybe i give them too much credit,
the operative word being "think."

[#22]

---

Sergio S wrote:

Wait, wait... What can be more ridiculous than this? I just received one of those e-mails "Sergio, here are 12 new jobs you may be interested in." One of them is a featured job, a very attractive long-term position but when I tried to see more details I ended up in this screen:

"Access denied: This job is private. Only freelancers invited by client can view this job."

Give me a break!

---

Sounds like maybe you haven't used Upwork as a client. It's not unusual to start a job as a public posting then change it. For example, a couple of weeks ago I identified the freelancer I wanted to hire for a job, but didn't want to send him an offer until I had all of the materials in hand that he'd need to get started. So, I set the job to invitation only to make sure additional freelancers weren't wasting their connects while I was waiting for the additional information I needed to make the hire.

[#23]

Holy cow!

“wallcome my frist post.....”

Client is from the US.

[#24]

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Ravindra B wrote:

Holy cow!

“wallcome my frist post.....”

Client is from the US.

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_____________________

A Walmart customer ... 😉

ETA: I rather like "wallcome" a sort of hybridization of Welcome y'all!

[#25]

@ Ray C.,

Just because a client lists a $ 10 or $100 budget, if the job and you are worth more, the solution is educate the client.  Just like in the B&M world.

There are designers on site who are charging and earning professional rates.  Just like there are writers, programmers, etc. charging and earning professional rates. 

[#26]

---

Wendy C wrote:

@ Ray C.,

Just because a client lists a $ 10 or $100 budget, if the job and you are worth more, the solution is educate the client.  Just like in the B&M world.

There are designers on site who are charging and earning professional rates.  Just like there are writers, programmers, etc. charging and earning professional rates. 

Yes I understand that. I am one of them. I educate my clients all the time. I'm addressing the very same thing this thread is about: Why are there so many clients who need educating and so few who seem to understand the services they are buying. I know there are more than we see on these lists which seem to be inundated with beginners and novices who have to be educated about their own business. It just seems odd that Upwork gets so much riff-raff. What I'm wondering is why do we have such a huge "crazy job postings" thread?