Wearing a sandwich board of any sort qualifies.

Our morals are relative, our bank statements, piddling, and our shame, even less. From moving in with mom and dad to to freelancing for porn spammers to dubious Couponzi schemes (disclaimer: we at Brokelyn do not endorse the puns from that show, but might borrow one if it’s right there for the taking), there’s nothing our generation hasn’t tried in the name of saving or making a buck. Some say it’s the root of all evil, but money is also the genesis of some pretty priceless stories. We asked our friends and other assorted seedy characters what they’ve done for money, and here are their confessions. What’s the most questionable thing you ever did for dough?

• “My roommate and I once stole a light bulb from a coffee house table lamp because we were too cheap and lazy to go buy one.  It wasn’t even the right voltage.”

• “I started visiting a dying relative in hopes I’d get a little something extra when he eventually passed.”

• “I moved back in with my parents.”

• “My high school friend and his frat brothers stole people’s textbooks from the library (during finals week!) and sold them.”

• “Once I bought a ticket to a Girl Talk concert I couldn’t go to, then sold it to a friend of a friend for triple face value when the concert sold out.  Then I felt like shit and made him rainbow chip cupcakes.”

• “Last summer I collected sunglasses from the lost and found at work and sold them at Beacon’s Closet.”

• “I wake up every day and go to a job that I hate.”

• “To monitor our gambling habit in college, my friend and I made a rule:  we wouldn’t gamble our own money.  We decided to recycle cans and use the money we made from it as our gambling allowance. One day, we had a Eureka moment:  the campus Eco-house had to recycle cans as a policy, and used the revenue to fund their projects. An entire dorm of cans!  We drove over and found three giant, heaping plastic bags of cans outside—the mother lode. A girl called the campus cops on us and we had to do 20 hours of community service. When the guy running the community service found out what we were in for, he’d send people over to ask us what we’d done just to embarrass us.”

• “I’m a drug dealer.”

• “In college when I went out to eat with friends I would only order an appetizer and then finish everybody else’s plates. It worked because they were all trying to lose weight.”

• “The summer after I came back from being abroad I was super broke and my friends and I started a little business detailing cars. Our first client was a blind man with an SUV (he had a personal driver). My friend filched an electric buffer from the guy’s garage, and we started using it for all of the jobs we got. We ended up tripling our production and income, as we’d been doing everything by hand up until then. At the end of the summer we made him sneak back and return it.”

• “One summer when we were living in New Haven, my friend and I answered a Craigslist ad from a Yale MFA student from Russia who needed models for a photo shoot. It paid $50 for two hours. When we arrived, ‘Olga’ asked us to pick out an item to wear from a suitcase of clothes. But it was filled only with XXL, brightly-colored, Bill Cosby-style sweaters circa 1987.  She then instructed us to dance in the sweaters, to no music, among the backdrop of a gothic Yale dining hall.”

• “I freelanced a bit and made a list of hundreds of alternatives for spam words. My best one was ‘nude man’s own dressing.’ “

Become a bone master (tee hee). Photo via Flickr Joe White.

You wake up and every day is the same. You feel like you’re stuck in a rut. It’s time for changes in your life. Did you know that science is all the rage these days, since nerds run the world now? The American Museum of Natural History would be happy to help you explore it, with its Master of Arts in Teaching program, that you can attend for free! Spend the 15-month program working with actual scientists at the museum to learn how to best teach school kids about geology, life sciences and dinosaurs. This is no fly-by-night diploma mill: the program includes a $30,000 stipend, health benefits and two years of professional mentoring and development. The only catch is that you have to commit to  four years teaching in a high-needs public school, which could be anywhere in the state. Suddenly, I wish I didn’t fail the New York State Physics Regents.

Via Gothamist.

You can be a TaskRabbit like Chris M. -- or hire one.

Maybe you’ve heard about TaskRabbit, the web site where you can post small jobs for pre-screened helpers to bid on. We’ve written about them; I recently reviewed TaskRabbit for New York Magazine. Since it was a positive experience, I’m happy to pass along a tip that you can get $25 off your first task through 1/22 by entering SCOUTMOB at checkout. (The deal isn’t on the app.) Also, if you have a van / toolkit / mad Ikea assembly skills (a top NYC request) the service is still hiring rabbits, especially “handymen, house cleaners and those with ready access to easy transportation (cars)” says Jamie Viggiano, head of marketing for the company. You have to be pretty hardcore to eek out a living as a full-time rabbit, but a few of the part-timers I met were profitably supplementing day jobs with a few TR gigs a week.

Alexis Bledel: Brooklyn resident, aspiring riveter.

It’s easy for us ladies to get shut out of jobs requiring manual labor or technical expertise. For the females out there who are sick of being hostesses and secretaries, Nontraditional Employment for Women will help you get a job in the construction, transportation, energy or other physical industries. They offer career development programs and trainings, as well as casework and childcare. It should be noted that these jobs tend to be physically demanding for women OR men, but NEW also assists in physical fitness training. They estimate you could earn between $10-17 an hour your first year, but that can go up to $45 after an apprenticeship program! These are secure union positions with medical benefits and pensions (seriously, they still exist). Presently, only 3 percent of construction jobs are filled by women. This obviously needs to change, although it does make for good odds on the after work drink front…

NEW also specifically seeks women who “want to change their lives,” so if you are unemployed, underemployed or in a lame-ass sector that doesn’t let you wear helmets indoors, then this is your chance to escape. At the very least, we here at Brokelyn hope you have fun being the whistler instead of the whistlee.

Follow Rachel: @RachelEveStein. 

Brokelyn editor and Punderdome 3000 victor Tim Donnelly (right) has his finger on the pulse.

There’s one reason why lady Brokelyn writers outnumber men by three to one: Tim Donnelly. Yes, that fetching flanneled gent, basking in his own Punderdome afterglow (and a new blender!), is our Brokelyn editor, and it seems that words aren’t the only thing he has a way with. Ever since he took over, we’ve been swarmed by female talent. You’ve read their posts — we’re not complaining. But we were thinking we could maybe use some more dudes to even things out and submit stories on things dudes like. (Erm, beard care?). At the moment, foodies are especially welcome, but whatever your talents or interests, we’ll find an assignment for you. What you get by contributing to the Broketown Register: entry into our inner circle of income-challenged bon vivants, breakfast once a week, small-time fame, maybe.
What you don’t get: any less broke. (Yet!)
Whatever your gender, you have an open invitation to swing by one of our meetings, every Thursday morning at 9:30 at the Flying Saucer Cafe, 494 Atlantic Ave. near Third Avenue. Or email me at faye [at] brokelyn [dot] com.

Photo via Flickr's Amanda McCormick.

While your friends are spending their underemployment days learning the intricacies of Excel spreadsheets and half-skim-frappa-mocha-chinos, you could be mastering the arts of donutry. Bed-Stuy shop Dough (home of tastes like the hibuscus, graham cracker cheesecake and lemon poppy donuts) is looking to hire a few good bakers to learn how to make and glaze doughnuts for a part-time position. Pastry chef Beth Costello tells us the job is not difficult and doesn’t require any experience: “You pretty much just get to hang out all day, listen to music and make doughnuts,” she says. The job is between 20-30 hours a week, midday and evening shifts, pays $10 an hour, you get a 35 percent discount at Dough and Choice Market, plus you get to taste doughnuts and French press coffee all day. To apply, email beatboxbeth@gmail.com. Dough is at 448 Franklin Ave.

How come I can't get no Tang around here?

How do six figures, staying fit at work, an opportunity to finally use your master’s degree and the chance for distant (very distant) travel sound? Slightly better than stocking cans at Trader Joe’s, at least. NASA is hiring new astronauts! ”Creativity. Ambition. Teamwork. A sense of daring. And a probing mind. That’s what it takes to join NASA, one of the best places to work in the Federal Government,” says the ad (One of? What federal government job is better than going into fraking space? Does Health and Human Services have a TARDIS??). The salary ranges from the surprisingly low $64,000 up to $141,000, and you get to hitch a ride with the Russians up to the International Space Station. The requirements sound oddly attainable too: some advanced degrees, some experience, good vision. But, wait, you’d have to move to Houston. Ugh. Might have better luck waiting for The Doctor to offer a ride.

via WNYC’s Jody Avirgan.

Thank you for checking in at the proctologist.

What’s better than becoming fake “mayor” of some obscure dive bar? Become a real employee of a super prominent company! Foursquare, which, depending on your point of view, is either a super fun location check in game or an unceasing barrage of updates about how many of your friends are at Panera, is hiring a community support coordinator to respond to support requests, troubleshoot, work on community development and otherwise “be a friendly face and voice within the foursquare user community.” Which are all things you’re probably into if you’re a Foursquare-er. They’re based in the East Village, but if only there was only some way they could communicate that to people…

toasting to women's networking in DC.

Our lady readers from DC should be familiar with the hugely popular Women’s Information Network, which puts on great networking events, happy hours, and discussions for Democratic, pro-choice, media-saavy, professional women. Since moving to Brooklyn, I’ve actually missed the overabundance of business card-trading at bars I detested back in Washington. It turns out many WIN ladies moved here and felt the same way, so they have started a WIN NYC chapter! The official Launch of WIN NYC is on Dec. 8 at 7pm at The Delancey — an all around great venue — on 168 Delancey St. in Manhattan. Come early, since the first 50 attendees get two free drink tickets! They ask that you register for the event here.

You can also get further involved with WIN to plan events, or chair a committee — all great resume builders. So get your employed or unemployed tushes into Manhattan just this once for free drinks and solid career building with other socially conscious women.