strangest requests you've gotten unrelated to the gig you advertise?

[daviddoer]

I’ve also gotten the weird “let me use Upwork through your computer” request. Of course I turned it down and reported them.

I get homework requests a lot and those are annoying. At first, I used to try and help the students understand the assignment so that they could do it themselves. I once got into a whole thing trying to explain the symbolism and feminist message in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Of course, the guy didn’t want to hear any of it. He just wanted me to do the homework for him. Now I scold them and report them. I’m done trying to be helpful.

It’s not really a strange request, but I get a lot of people who want me to edit their work. I only do rewrites. I don’t like to edit. Mostly because I know it would drive me crazy fixing punctuation and grammar on writing that I’d be itching to jump in and improve. Why am I going to repaint your house when it really needs a complete tear-down and rebuild? I don’t want to fix the surface elements when the bones of it are all jacked up. Maybe I’m just a writing snot, but I’ve never seen a manuscript I didn’t want to tear apart and fix. Rewrites only! No line edits here.

I don’t know why people don’t just search for editing gigs. I don’t edit and have no interest in editing.

That’s kind of hilarious and awesome that you try to help students by explaining their assignment to them!

I, on the other hand, prefer editing to actually writing. I’ve got friends who can spit out WPM like nothin’ but aren’t good at making it neat and concise. My skills are stronger on the organization and detail work than being able to quickly produce content.

[miiila]

I have lost count of the number of people who either:

a) Ask me to write and post Amazon reviews.

b) Want me to write their term papers for them.

It has gotten so bad, I now have quick responses for each, requesting them to (politely) get lost. I also report them for inappropriate behavior.

b) Want me to write their term papers for them.

While that, judging from forum posts, seems to be quite common, I just saw kind of the reverse in BR, a teacher asking for people to correct tests.

[paulmaplesden]

b) Want me to write their term papers for them.

While that, judging from forum posts, seems to be quite common, I just saw kind of the reverse in BR, a teacher asking for people to correct tests.

I just saw kind of the reverse in BR, a teacher asking for people to correct tests.

These people should get together and create their own (highly-unethical) platform…

[miiila]

I just saw kind of the reverse in BR, a teacher asking for people to correct tests.

These people should get together and create their own (highly-unethical) platform…

They probably are too lazy to create their own platform, although they could buy a website creation gig and ask for “a platform just like Fiverr” and hire a VA to manage it.

[daviddoer]

It was the fastest CS order cancellation I’ve seen happening. Gone in minutes.

That’s pretty interesting, could be just coincidence, the queue of whoever got your ticket being low, or could mean someone does a quick check on incoming tickets to either prioritise or push them in the ‘has time’ queue, or they have software checking for trigger words there too. I never quite believed in the ‘in incoming order’. 🙂

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My most out of the ordinary one was someone asking me to make a phone call to some train stations to ask whether they found something they thought they might have lost there. Well, not quite, but I don’t want to write of the most out of the ordinary one. 😉

so did you call train stations?

[daviddoer]

I got several messages from someone who wanted me to let them remotely take over my computer to make a profile on Upwork, since they got banned from it.

remote control computer? ahahahahahhahah that’s craaazy talk.

I wonder if they found someone…

“yes! of course you can take over my computer!”

[miiila]

so did you call train stations?

Yes and no. I called 1 train station. 😉

[uk1000]

I had a request from someone asking me to click on a site/site ad because he needed to send a “weekly [ad] report to client” and didn’t have anything from my country. I think it would have been click fraud if I’d done it.