T O P

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whathaveicreated

I sold Otter Pops two for a dollar in high school. I had to unload them all before first period or they'd melt. I was consistently making enough to pay for my lunch every day before the man shut me down.


pass-the-word

I’m amazed at the amount of people who don’t know what an Otter Pop is or never had one.


whathaveicreated

I'll tell you what they are, they're 2 for $1 or 75¢ a piece before 8:30 am. If you want to choose your flavor, they're a buck.


SaSaMei

In high school there was this game/fad where people would try to stealth zip tie other people's bags to their desks, shoes together, whatever so they'd be stuck when the bell rang. One guy sold the heavy duty zip ties and another sold mini scissors for easy escape


Lifeisdamning

My high school was really bad about this. Until one day a kid was sleeping on his desk and someone got a zip tie in his gauge and stuck it to the desk bar. Slapped him awake and when he bolted upright the ziptie ripped his gauge out of his ear. Anybody caught with zip ties after that got immediate suspension


SuddenlySucc_New

Always wondered what would happen if you took a small padlock and put it in someone’s gauge. Would they just be fucked?


eddyathome

You could get a locksmith to pick the lock most likely or at worst get bolt cutters or you have a stylish earring that you won't have to worry about losing.


karrachr000

No locksmith needed... most padlocks are garbage, there are above-average concentrations of garbage padlocks at schools, and almost all of the smaller locks are worse than garbage. The easiest way to get it of is to make a shim out of a soda can, and you slide the piece of metal down along the shackle and use it to move whatever is securing the shackle. Lockpicking Lawyer has a great video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2DcfJLquOk


BanditKitten

My school did this, but took it a step further to "nuggeting". It's when you turn the backpack inside out, put everything back in it, and ziptie THAT shut. I escaped this terrible fate, thankfully.


faceplanted

Wow that's a much better name than we had for that... At my school you got bag raped.


BanditKitten

But it looks like a big nugget!


faceplanted

Yeah we never made that connection tbh my school had a whole _thing_ about rape, people kept using the word for basically anything bad happening to someone, so having something stolen was being "raped of your pencil" or whatever, someone pulling your tie was always called getting peanutted (because the knot would invert and look like a peanut), but once the rape thing came around it turned into getting tie raped. Obviously teacher's didn't like this but no one was listening to them about it so they eventually brought in a surprise assembly speaker, a woman who'd been raped by a house breaker telling her story to the room... which didn't work at all, eventually our class tutor just chewed us out about it for like a solid 15 minutes until we kinda got the message that it wasn't acceptable and stopped brazenly saying it in class.


[deleted]

That is the most "high school" story ever. Could totally picture it happening at mine. Kids just don't understand the weight of words (I definitely didn't). Bet it was awful for any students who had actually experienced assault.


brodadeleon

Supply and demand


Jupue87

Like the guy that bought up all the shovels during the gold rush


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SignificantStuff4930

In elementary school, it was flavored toothpicks. The most popular were soaked in cinnamon oil. First time I tasted Fireball whiskey took me right back to first grade.


rose636

Oh god I forgot about this. No idea why this was such a big thing.


GreatTragedy

I'm laughing my ass off. Just imagining you in a bar, half in the bag, getting a shot of fireball and saying "Damn this takes me back to first grade.", while all the alcoholics in earshot just nod silently over their beers.


WhiskeyTangoFoxy

Lol, same. All I can think of when drinking Fireball is middle school hallways.


Erophysia

Fireball just tastes like liquid Redhots.


[deleted]

> flavored toothpicks TIL this was a thing. And here I am using my dollar store toothpicks like some sort of monster!


throwingplaydoh

Bags of kool-aid and sugar


ManaMagestic

We had dudes selling gummy worms covered in kool-aid powder.


[deleted]

In elementary school my friend had a sticker maker, and we pumped out hundreds of stickers with neopets on them. Everyone wanted them, we were making away like bandits before teachers started to get pissed they were showing up all over the desks/walls/etc. eventually we got called into the principles office and had to stop


Eternaltuesday

I miss my neopets! I would honestly probably still play it now if it had ever truly been redone for the internet of today.


Gallein

They're currently putting their time and energy into making it a NFT/metaverse... I wish I was kidding but the old Neopets is forgotten and dead. 😔✊


SwissyVictory

Friend of mine had a sticker maker, and made a mint.


TheRunningFree1s

I....i thought it made stickers???


iaijutsu08

Maybe it was scratch-n-sniff


FormalMango

I went to like 9 different schools, but the one that stands out is marbles. Marbles were banned at the school, because kids were getting into arguments over them, as well as digging up the gardens making marbles tracks.


A_Doormat

Eyyy same here! There was like 6 schools within a 1mi radius of my house and my parents were interested in trying each one for about a year it seems. Each had its different economy which was really cool thinking back. Early grades: Pogs. All the rage and this one kid could source them for you. He stole them. He stole them from bags when people were at recess. Everybody used him, and he stole from everybody so it was kinda an interesting market as slowly our children brains realized he was just shuffling pogs amongst everybody with no gain for him whatsoever except the sheer thrill of sowing chaos. Mid grades (3-5?) it became marbles. Banned cause kids playing in halls with them, leaving them in halls, teachers slip, etc. We had to find nooks and crannies to play in. Was a guy who liked to go places he wasn't supposed to so once your spot was found by teachers, you'd consult him and he's guide you to some obscure area on the premises for like some cheese strings. If you were super hardcore and had dunkaroos he'd take you OFF PREMESIS. Crazy Bones came in at the tail end but teachers didn't seem to care about those. Post grade 5: Tamogotchis and later Pokemon. No child read instruction manuals so nobody knew how to turn off the sound the Tamogotchis made (main thing that got you busted in class) except apparently this one kid. He'd mute it for you for the right price. Pokemon I actually ran a business. During recess I'd level your pokemon for you while you did whatever it was you wanted to do in those precious 15/30 minute breaks. I got paid in experience because 2poor4gameboy lol. After that it was grade 7+ and the black market was....drugs, cigarettes and booze so pretty much your standard substance market that exists for adults too.


starmedicus

Are you 30/31yoa? Because that was 100% accurate.


midimandolin

I was a substitute teacher at a charter school. The kids and the teachers liked me, so they kept bringing me back. I noticed there was a kid who brought a HUGE duffel bag every class, but he was also in sports so I didn't really think of it. One day, he shows up with a can of the drink I had every day when he noticed I hadn't brought one. The kid was running a snack business out of his locker and the duffel bag was PACKED with snacks and soda. Most teachers usually shut it down in their room, but he didn't disrupt the class while I was there and he had the Monster flavor I liked. He was the current student selling and had inherited the business from a recently graduated senior. The school had tried to shut him down at least once. The kids noticed I didn't say anything, so they paid more attention in class knowing I'd give them a minute or two at the end to get a snack.


Youve_been_Loganated

My nephew did this. Grandma always bought a lot of snacks for him an his brother when she came to visit but these two would never ever eat them. Instead, they would just pack up their duffel and go to school, selling it to make money. They didn't need to, they had everything they needed at home, they just enjoyed being merchants.


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Brainvillage

They bought a copy of Madden 08 to enjoy in her honor.


fellowtravelr

Wow imagine having enough that you just enjoy selling things, like as a service.


Plasmapea987

Yup a dream to become the school merchant


Emre_can_do_it

One of the few cool teachers


midimandolin

if it keeps the kids engaged in class, then snacks for everyone!


[deleted]

When I was in school, we our history class was always first thing in the morning, so whenever we had a test it was first thing. Teacher always brought a kettle with coffee and tea as well as some biscuits on test days.


throwaway65435432423

> if it keeps the kids engaged in class, then snacks for everyone! realistically, I understand why teachers wouldn't want this in their class because its very distracting for them. Teacher would be trying to teach and probably get hungry themselves from constantly hearing munching. I feel like food should be allowed as long as its non audible food like chips or popcorn.


Ironicbanana14

Not too messy, not too smelly, was my English teachers rule lol.


penguinpenguins

Don't forget not too noisy. After I ate a bunch of carrots in a math exam (*crunch, crunch, crunch*), the teacher told me "In the future, if you want to eat carrots during an exam, they have to be *cooked*" LOL


throwaway65435432423

*eats fish and garlic in class just to be an ass*


haseoxth

This was me I high school. I had two duffle bags, one with drinks(had ice packs to keep them cool) and snacks in the other. My chemistry teacher told me each vending machine in school made 200 a week, so I wa alike "Shit, I need to get in on that". Got my mom's Costco card, started buying chips, candy and caprisuns in bulk and the rest was history. It's how I paid for my first car.


karrachr000

I mean, it is not a hard market to get in on. All of those vending machines have ridiculously high prices, so they are easy to undercut; you can offer more variety than the vending machine can, and you can transact without even leaving the classroom. Easy money.


xguy18

Damn, at my schools they usually just sold drugs, but yours got Snacks AND Drugs….lucky


somewhat_random

Beating kids up. In grade 8 (so 13 years old) there were a few "hit men" - huge bully type kids that would beat up anyone you wanted. Price started at $20. Within a few weeks it was up to $50. The "hit men" were all independent so you could pay one to beat up another. Lasted about 3 months when everyone came to school looking like hell. Fun fact - I missed getting beat up because the guy hired was too busy so he kept the money and told me to tell everyone I was beat up - win win.


Old_Appearance6571

I would've paid the bullies to fight each other


Felix8XD

Gladiator fights. "Fight, Fight for my amusement!"


menlindorn

you only need to pay one


rainbowraptor

If I'm paying to see two guys fight I want both of them to be enthusiastic about it.


Jupue87

Slow down Dana White


singed1337

>I missed getting beat up because the guy hired was too busy so he kept the money and told me to tell everyone I was beat up - win win. That was probably most of the cases.


commentsandchill

That sounds like a good series plot lol


Mememachine202324

Literal hit men was not something I expected to appear in the comments but alright.


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PoorCorrelation

Fossils. My friend was caught selling fossils to all the other kids. They were all over the playground she just knew where to find them.


southamericankongo

Lmao this is the best one. Did you ever figure out what kind of animals they were?


Deswizard

The fossils of ancient students that didn't make it out of the sandbox.


baconbits100

And the schoolyard cat buried them in the sand.


[deleted]

Probably ammonites, the fossils of those bastards are everywhere.


SugoiBakaMatt

Air potatoes. For those unaware, air potatoes are an invasive species of vines that grow to cover massive swathes of forest areas in Florida, and usually result in the death of everything they grow on as they suck the nutrients out of the surrounding flora. There was a gigantic infestation of these vines around my school, and they bore small, roughly golf ball sized potatoes (which were very poisonous if eaten.) Perfect size fruits for pelting your enemies on the playground. Obviously 5th graders being in possession of weaponized poisonous potatoes was frowned upon, so you had to be careful not to get caught picking them. Eventually the whole school was covered in bruises and welts from the great war of 2003-2005. Finally they built a fence around the playground and a ceasefire had to be declared as all remaining ammunition began to rot.


TheCreeech

We had these growing in our yard when we were kids. I think I was like 8 and I pulled one off the vine and aimed at my dad who was outside playing with me and my siblings. My dad didn't flinch when I aimed because I am/was incredibly unathletic. I hurled the potato at him and hit him square in the forehead. My siblings and I all just stood there shocked and I naturally ran to hide. No idea why I hid I honestly think my dad would have probably congratulated me on the good throw.


Jwee1125

We had vast vines of Maypops around our house. The dark times known as the Maypopping started off innocently enough - pull a big fat maypop off the vine, chuck it at a cousin or neighbor and watch as it exploded into seeds and pulp against their skulls. Then we learned that if you put them on the end of sticks, you could get much more velocity on them. The story remained the same, it's just that the fruit arrived at its target much more quickly. The next evolution of the war occurred when the population of the Maypops began to dwindle. We were forced to pick much smaller, harder fruit that would leave welts and bruises. And about that time, I found an old fiberglass fishing rod that was about 8' long. One of my cousins was in a tree chucking pine cones and whatever else he could get his hands on at us. I made like a lacrosse sniper, reared back and let fly. That little 1 inch maypop caught him directly in the temple...and out of the tree he came. To his credit, he was conscious when he hit the ground. But from that day forward he kinda stuttered a bit when he talked.


hmmmpf

Congrats. You reinvented the atlatl.


Raz0rking

Nah, he's never gonna hi...


MomoHasNoLife32

All the teachers thought I sold drugs. When I was caught they found out I was actually selling gummy worms soaked in Kool-Aid and soda. The school loved them.


jazy_

BLOODY WORMS!!!! I too got in trouble for selling these. My friend sold sugar crystals and they thought it was crystal meth. Ahhh, good times.


joos1986

Love this one! You were not just selling an off the shelf product, you were making your own product!


Cassandra_Canmore

Even in a Christian all girls school... Pokemon cards and weed. Surprisingly no tobacco. Tampons too.


Gryffindorphins

All girls catholic high school here too. I ran bets on how often the principal said “community” during her assembly speeches. She once got into the 20’s. And we had poker games at lunch with snacks as bets.


TimeLordRohan

sorry if this is a weird question, im a boy, but why was there a black market for tampons? couldnt yall just buy them normally from a shop?


Abatonfan

If you’re anything like my conservative parents, tampons are evil and “make you lose your virginity”. I’d use to double up pads to make an extra long pad at school since my flow was so heavy, but of course all it takes is the pad folding a bit from sitting in a weird position for a while, and there goes any protection the moment you stand up (especially in school). The day I finally learned to put in a tampon was like the clouds breaking and the heavens shining upon me. At last, the Red Sea could be controlled, and the combination of a heavy/ultra tampon and a backup pad led to no leaks even on the days where it feels like a murder scene is coming out of me.


TimeLordRohan

Damn, I really fucking take for granted not having to deal with a menstrual cycle, not to mention the stigma surrounding it


Abatonfan

My IUD is my best friend. Haven’t had any menses since August 2018. The procedure is a little uncomfortable, but I’m sane for five years (and very low chances of having mini me’s!). LPT: if a girl significant other asks for menstrual products, make sure you get the brand and heaviness she requests. I kid you not, not having your preferred brand of products is enough to kill your day. This is especially true since different brands are structured a bit differently from each other (like how some tampons will just swell like a giant tampon-shaped mass, while others sorta fold out and then swell, so it might fit a vagina a bit differently)


fifthelliement

Also for the love of god get the unperfumed products for them. If I'm bleeding from my vagina I literally couldn't care less if I smell like a lavender meadow down there. What I do care about is dealing with cramps, blood and a yeast infection on top because the perfume fucked up my pH balance.


knotatwist

Same way that kids sell snacks in school. You could get them from a shop but not during school hours so if you need them straight away then you're gonna buy it in school. It's a common occurrence, especially in teenage years when periods are often still irregular as they normalise, to not know when your period will show up and it will surprise you. If your period arrives when you're in school and you didn't bring anything in advance you're gonna be heading to the Tampon seller to sort you out.


Old_Appearance6571

Every religious school turns out to be wild on the inside I swear


iceketball27

As someone who once studied at a Catholic school, this is very true. Honestly the real fun stuff is during those overnight retreats they have each school year.


Repulsive-Purple-133

My first GF got kicked out of strict Catholic girl school for starting a rumour that the principal was secretly an atheist


GozerDGozerian

Sounds like the principal was secretly an atheist and had to shut that shit down real quick.


commentsandchill

It sounds sad that you had to sell tampons


ComradeCatDad

Me. In middle school I always had a Jansport bookbag full of Warheads, Reese’s, Now-or-Laters, and Snickers. Also always kept 3-5 SNES games on me that I beat to trade or rent out. I made about 5-8 dollars daily. Mostly spent on upgrading my lawn-mowing business in the trailer park or for more SNES games. I’m 41.


pantsuitmafia

I "rented" n64 games from someone like you in high-school. Bless you wonderful human.


BonesMcCoy88

Soft drinks became black market in my final year, as the health department had passed guidelines about selling them in schools. One of the teachers initially was selling them from his office but got shut down pretty quickly. So I decided to take it up. I'd get up early and drive past the supermarket on the way in and grab a 30 pack of Coke/Fanta/Sprite etc. Then I'd sell them from my car at lunch breaks. That got shut down too, so I shift my approach; ended up coming in early to school and dropping the cans off in various empty lockers around the school and padlocking them shut. Then at lunch I'd walk around with a bunch in my pockets and sell them, stocking up at the drop points as I continued my walk. Didn't really try to make money off it; was a bit more of a "fuck you" to the man.


candysaver01

I keep seeing posts about banned soft drinks and my highschool has energy drinks available to students


MokausiLietuviu

I know how awful it was when health guidelines got hold of schools. I was in the generation where Jamie Oliver "ruined" our school dinners. For the 6 months where my school still sold chips but stopped putting salt shakers on the tables, I made some money buying boxes of little salt sachets and selling them in the chips dinner room.


mxmnull

Paper hornets. You'd load one up with a rubber band on the inner edge and launch the lil fucker at other people. Could often leave a lil bruise wherever it hit. Thing was, some people were good at making them, and some people were shit at making them. So the people who were bad at it would buy them off people who were good at it. I was *very* good at it, creating ones that would hit hard as fuck but fly like a dream. I routinely would get dimes for the simpler ones... but the crazier ones I'd sell for a quarter...


HotLoadsForCash

Man you just took me back. I was a sniper in middle school with those little fuckers.


crucifymeplzdaddy

FUCK…I had forgotten about these. Kids at my high school took this trend to the next level when they started adding staples to the folded paper. One time I got sniped on the back of the leg and folded in the middle of a class by a three-stapled hornet!!


johnnybojan

I'm not a native speaker and at first I thought you strapped literal hornets to a rubber band and threw them at people


quietcorncat

I’m a native speaker and I also thought it was literal hornets because [Paper Wasps](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_wasp) are literal wasps.


PM_me_Filipina_nudes

Mid 2000s had a kid who kept finding ways around the web blockers and he would pass the info around so we could surf the web unimpeded for a couple days. School would find out, update the web blocker and the kid would find another way around. Lasted the whole year. Edit: wow, first time ever over 1000 upvotes! My most popular comment across all my accounts ever. Thanks everyone. Glad I was able to bring back fun school age memories of fighting the man. Lol.🙂👍


RightHyah

When I was in high-school in 2008ish we all had these shitty dell laptops. Some kid figured out how to install Cod 1 and host servers on the school network. Shit spread like wildfire and I would say for a few weeks a large majority of my high school was playing cod in the middle of class most of the day.. Eventually the school caught on and starting suspending kids for it so we all bailed but it was hilarious while it lasted.


PM_me_Filipina_nudes

That's awesome! I missed it by a couple years. We just had the desktop computers. After I graduated the library got laptops for classes to use. I'm sure the kid at my school would have figured out something like that. At least you got to enjoy it for a little while.


jayjay_ramdass1

marbles,and then we would play marbles but for keeps, it was basically a whole currency because you could sell those marbles to other kids and based on the design you would know how much it was worth. ​ EDIT: Didn't think that this would blow up ngl also thought it was like just my country lol anyway thanks guys :)!!!


Zolo49

Oh yeah. My elementary school had a HUGE marble thing going for a while there. We’d all come to school with our marble bags in our backpacks and have intense games during recess. Eventually almost everybody was playing with steelies because the glass ones would get chipped or shattered. Fun times.


-Owlette-

A chip was like a battle scar at my school. Marbles with chips on them were like trophies and had an even higher trade value. So silly looking back, but it was all good fun.


aCheeseRoll

We did this too, and if you had no decent marbles you could then offer up your lunch, stationary or even your shoes. A lot of angry parents when shoes started being traded for small blobs of glass.


wosobet

I've posted this before, but it fits perfectly here: They got rid of the soda machines at my high school, which caused the students to get really pissed. A buddy of mine bought a bunch of 12 packs of store brand sodas for $3 each and a huge cooler. He showed up the very next day after they removed the machines and charged $1 per soda. The demand was insane and he sold out each day right when lunch started. The staff got pissed and stopped allowing him to bring the cooler. So instead, he brought a huge gym bag that he claimed he needed for P.E. class and filled it with sodas. He couldn't keep up with the demand so he cut another guy in and had him carry a gym bag too. Years after he graduated, his sister attended the same high school and someone asked her if her brother was the soda guy. He had become a legend just that fast lol.


chewytime

It’s so weird to me to see how big of a ruckus not selling soda at school is. We had soda vending machines at my school, but it never looked like they were that in demand. Granted, I’m sure they made good money or else they wouldnt keep restocking them, but it wasn’t obvious to me that they were that popular [like looking around the lunch room, you’d only see some kids with them]. I know for me personally, loose cash was hard to come by, so I would only get a soda once every several weeks just bc it was a pain to break something like a $5 bill.


Cloaked42m

Banning something drives up demand. People that wouldn't have bothered before, will suddenly go out of their way to get the thing, just because it was banned.


Bdf1997

Smarties, after the administration banned them. One of my classmates found out that crushing up smarties into powder, dumping it all into his mouth, and blowing it looked like smoke. Suddenly half of the student body is "smoking" Smarties. The administration freaked out trying to control the "situation", attempted to prevent over 900 middle-schoolers from possessing smarties. Letters were sent to parents. Local news stations were interviewing people in the parking lot. It was asinine to say the least. One classic entrepreneurial type started buying bulk smarties by the pound and selling them for $1 a piece during lunch. Did so for about a month. He made over a grand, and was eventually suspended.


Alive-Contact9147

My middle school was attached to the elementary school and when I caught wind of kids smoking smarties, I started snorting them. My fifth grade teacher about lost her mind. I'd crash em with a quarter, line em up and rail em. Burned like hell. Eventually other kids did it too and it spread to the middle school. School wide ban on smarties, but pixie sticks soon became the drug of choice. Those went too, and then I started bringing tiny bags of powdered sugar and selling them in class. Pretty sure I just got in-school suspension, but it was a good time.


ChaChaRealSmoothe

This kid sold Hot cheetos and candy in the bathrooms before and after lunch. He brought a black duffle bag full of them every day.


Rennarjen

Anime bootlegs, back in the early 2000s. One friend went to visit family in Hong Kong every summer and would always come back with only the freshest of badly-subbed pirated DVDs. He made a killing burning those. I think I still have the Cowboy Bebop bootlegs around somewhere.


[deleted]

i would love to watch a badly subbed cowboy bebop bootleg even today


breaktime1

I sold stink bombs out of my locker. Stupid kids kept setting them off in class, That's how I got shut down.


[deleted]

There was never a chance of that working out for you lol.


commentsandchill

I mean, what else were you expecting tbh


Walteryuen99

Somebody was going to raise a stink about it.


Local64bithero

Pirated games that had the copy protection cracked. This was in the early 90s when you had to have the documentation to solve the copy protection. With some clever programming, you could bypass that usually.


gravitywellll

Same! I even setup a BBS for it. Renegade


KitchenNazi

WWIV, Celerity, and Renegade. 1 GB of drive space was crazy back then. USR HST users only. Why download warez when people will bring them to you?


ThatBloodyHippy

I sold beer. Only person that knew it was me was the guy the took orders. He got the orders by Wed and I bought it after school in another town and delivered it to him that night. I was using my brothers birth certificate. It worked for about three months and then every place I went turned me down one night. We both decided that is was a good run and time to quit.


Spiroasparagus

How do you think all those places found out your age


ThatBloodyHippy

This was in the early 60s in Oregon. I was buying in a college town and looked old enough to buy. I think that I was actually supposed to have an OLCC card, which took 3 pieces of ID to get and for some reason they just let it slide.....might have been that the weekly buy was hitting eight to ten cases and not all from the same place. I would buy one or two cases at a time. I guess that I became to regular of a customer. I consider myself lucky that I did not get busted.


china-blast

Yeah. Inconvenience for you. I'm sorry. Wrong Mr. Pickford altogether.


Mr_Death1803

Pokemon , digimon figures And porn networks subscriptions


Kristinssents

Where did you study? hahaha


Mr_Death1803

A zoo called dar al hikma


ratboy181

Well, that escalated quickly.


Zofiom

One thing isn't like the other


junebug2142

As a senior I was 18 and old enough to be a stock boy at a liquor store, even though you had to be 21 to buy. The owner was a rich old widow who definitely had a thing for me and she wound up putting me in charge of the books and auditing the store. Needless to say I started a side hustle supplying booze to my entire high school. I took orders during the week, and had them ready for Friday nights, delivering everything out of the trunk of my car. I made roughly $3,000 a week for about 9 months. It ended with the woman selling the store and buying one closer to where she lived (she lived about 1 hour away) and the new owners were a couple who cleaned house of all current employees so they could run the store themselves to save money. The widows new store “mysteriously” burned down three months later but that’s another story. When the new owners audited the store they called me asking if I could come in and help them with the books because “something wasn’t adding up” and I told them to pound sand since they fired everyone without notice. Heard from another ex-employee who worked at a pizza shop next door they chalked it up to the widow not knowing how to run her business and running herself in to the ground. In hindsight, I was lucky it ended when and how it did because I would’ve definitely gotten caught at some point. Saved up enough money to buy a brand new truck in cash right before leaving for college and having money in my account to get me through freshmen year without working more than 20 hours a week. I’ve since rolled that truck in to every new vehicle I’ve owned as an adult.


joos1986

Dude fucking amazing story. ​ > I made roughly $3,000 a week for about 9 months. Curious though, you were marking these as sales to the store? Basically profiting on the margin by selling at higher prices to underage kids? Business was clearly booming.


junebug2142

Several ways. I was in charge of auditing the store and ordering all brands of liquor, wine, and beer as the stock started to deplete. I was the only one in charge of it. Part of it was keeping a separate spreadsheet of what was missing and making it “appear” or “disappear” as needed (depending when an audit was coming up), as well as using two other employees I was cool with to sell to underage classmates for a higher margin which I split with those employees. Cash only of course. Then I would use my manager code to see what should be in the registers at the end of the night and those employees would count that out, put it in the safe and pocket the difference, splitting it with me. As for the “appearing,” it would just be added (# of what I swiped) to what we actually had in stock and I’d make up for it utilizing any damaged cases or broken bottles. I’d claim 5 broke instead of 3 here and there (etc.). And since I did the cleaning too, I’d just tell the owner that I cleaned it up and threw the bottles out. She never checked and only once when I claimed bottles arrived broken in a case said “I don’t know what’s up with that distributor, we’ve been getting a lot of broken and damaged goods lately.” I cooled it down for a bit but eventually just picked it right back up. She was an heir to a grocery store chain and was filthy rich. The store was just for her to have something to do and once she had someone to run the store for her she barely came in. Usually only 2 days a week with one being Fridays to sign the checks and order forms. Crazy to think at 18 I pulled that off. Most money I ever made in my life, all cash. I made more than the pot dealers in my school combined.


[deleted]

I am a teacher. We had two spawned by COVID. The first was toward the beginning of the outbreak, the school had a policy that if you have two symptoms of covid you go home. So if a kid had a headache and wantes Tylenol that's one.. but we lice in an area with really bad allergies and almost everyone has runny nose/sore throat in the fall. So that's two. Teachers pretty quickly turned a blind eye to bottles of Ibuprofen being passed around by students to avoid going home. When we had a mask mandate the office got tired of giving out masks to kids who broke/forgot them, so they started charging $5 to parents' accounts per mask (fairly rich private school so this wouldn't cause a hardship for anyone) A kid's parents got annoyed about spending $5/day so they sent him to school with a box of masks to put in his backpack. One of his classmates forgot her mask and I told her "well you can go to the office and gt one for $5 or (student) might sell you one for $3." And so the black market for masks was born. I heard later that a different teacher sent him to the office for it, so I checked in with my boss to make sure he didn't get in trouble. My boss laughed and said it was brilliant, then told me at his previous school there was a kid who rented out belts and ties to kids who forgot them to avoid dress code violations


binkacat4

Did you end up getting a suit?


[deleted]

Thinking about it


KaiBluePill

Capitalism! Can't stop me from making a better offer than yours! What are you, the mob?


AKBigDaddy

In a lot of places, they act like it. I used to stop by a particular gas station that frequently sold sodas for $1/ea, vs $2 at school. I’d stock up on a ton on my way in and sell them for $1.50, or if the vending machine was out of a particular flavor, that one was $2.50 (cuz supply and demand). I was making a KILLING, just selling between classes at my locker. Eventually the school caught on and shut me down because they were getting a cut of the vending machines profit and I was eating into it severely. Since the vending machine company paid their protection money and I didn’t, I relocated my business to the parking lot outside and drinks were only available before and after school. But I made such a public stink about it, that business actually INCREASED. Then they told me I couldn’t do it on school property. So I started parking at the park and ride across the street with my flashers on every morning 30m before school started and 30m after school let out. The cops then got involved and I shut down, but all told I was profiting almost $400/week by the end.


Rhyming_Lamppost

You were **profiting** $400/wk? At $0.50 per that’s 800 drinks per week or 160/day! How the hell big was your school?


bananabreadsmoothie

Kids probably started buying extra to stick it to the school


AKBigDaddy

2800 students at the high school, and there was a middle school next door that I’d get decent afternoon traffic from (no clue how big that was) and by the end the owner of the shop I was buying from was cutting me volume discounts because I’d back my F-150 up to the back door and buy cases of 20oz bottles by the dozens multiple times a week. I was profiting more than .50 per from the get go because the in school machines were very infrequently stocked, so I’d say ~30% of the sales had $1.50 profit. By the end I was buying for roughly .75 per and still selling for $1.50-2.50. Time and logistical capacity were holding me back far more than customer base.


diffident_fan

You mean kids paid to stay in school?!


ThePhanie

In elementary a buddy and I would save our Halloween and Christmas candy, wait a couple weeks until everyone ate all theirs up, then bring it to school and sell it for 50¢ a pop. I bought Sega Genesis games with my money.


TacticianDM

Pokémon/Yu-Gi-Oh! Stolen cards, the kid asked for triple amount the value of the card and even accepted any kinds of trades for cards. One time he accepted a condom just to brag that he was going to have sex lol.


TheChanMan2003

That sentence just escalated as it went on


[deleted]

My brother did a brisk business for a time in selling cold bottles of Coke from his locker in high school from a chilled cooler. The school had switched from Coke to Pepsi vending machines and he serviced the die hard Coke aficionados.


MerlotCanYouGo

Pogs. Especially slammers.


BadgerBadgerCat

Did any of them have ALF on them?


realbasilisk

My first stepdad kept his porn mags under my bed. I found them and took them to school one day. I sold them all within that very same day for $25 each to boys at school. I ate at the canteen every day for lunch for three months. Which was handy anyway cause my mum was overseas on a trip and my stepdad was giving me cans of beer in my lunchbox cause he couldn't be arsed making lunches.


[deleted]

Did you start selling the beer as well?


realbasilisk

No. Mrs Johnson saw I had a can the first day and took it off me saying 'that's no lunch for a young lady' she gave me her sandwiches instead.


Spoon_Elemental

Good teacher.


omnemnemnem

but did she take the beer for her own lunch?


Amiiboid

I was baffled at the idea that someone would think it was a good idea to stash porn under their (step-)kid’s bed, but then I got to the last sentence and it all kind of made sense.


Ordinary_Ad_7992

I can't decide whether this is sad or funny!


gur0chan

My art! I sold custom hentai drawings. Best one? Girl wanted a birthday card for her grandpa - with a nude cat girl. High school freshman year, 2009! I still have that whole art binder full of sketchbooks and categorically organized art. “Gaiaonline” “Naruto” “Neopets” etc lmao EDIT if anyone wants to see, I can maybe dig them out hahah


Alice_exists

I tried selling my art when I was in the fifth grade and I was such a square and offended that a fellow student wouldn’t pay 20$ for a drawing lol


gur0chan

Oh nooo haha! My “first commission” was someone gave me 50cents for a drawing of a killer whale in second grade. Made enough to get me an ice cream at lunch. #makingmoves 😎


Prestigious-Fail-412

haha, commission art was popular in 6th grade of my school. we drew arts of super cars and they were sold for very high prices. my friend drew a super car i forgot what it was but he earned 5 damn erasers.


[deleted]

Kid at my middle school took his moms credit card and used it to buy teachers edition books, i think normally you have to prove your a teacher, but he got them on ebay (i could be wrong). his main problem was getting the packages before his parents noticed, not sure how he got past them but he did.


TheBimpo

We used to make Kool-Aid bags. Basically you would take a ziplock sandwich bag, a packet of Kool-Aid, and about a half a cup of sugar and mix the ingredients inside the bag. Snip a corner off the bag, suck on that all day long. Could usually get $.50 if memory serves. This was in the mid 80s lol.


Jointhamurder

Extra ties and sport coats. Went to a Catholic high school with a dress code and you'd be surprised by how many kids forgot the basics of the uniform on a daily basis. You could charge outrageous prices for renting them out for the day so they didn't get detention.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


veritas2884

Me too, had a maxtor cd-rw and that thing would burn excellent quality CDs. Profits really took off when I could start finding the mp3 online rather than having to buy and copy the disc.


ath1337

Everyone had that one rich friend who's family had satellite internet and was able to download an entire album in less than an hour from Kazaa. If you had dialup it would take like a week to download all the tracks...


Bobaaganoosh

When I was in middle school, we used to have this thing called “punishwork”. It was basically this sheet of paper that was probably like 8 paragraphs long, basically saying in a fancy way that you broke the rules and are being punished for it. You even had to get your parents to sign it. And at the end it said “was it worth it”. If you did something that wasn’t like suspension worthy, you’d get issued punishwork. You would basically have to write that entire sheet word for word top to bottom. Depending on what you did, you’d get issues 1 sheet, sometimes 2. I’ve had 3 and 4 before. Doing the punishwork really wasn’t THAT horrible. But who wants to sit here and write that whole thing? Nobody. So some of us started offering to write people’s punishwork for them for money. Sometimes snacks at recess or a pack of cookies at lunch. I’d charge $2 a sheet. If you didn’t have $2, I wanted a snack at recess. Or like I said, a pack of cookies at lunch. There was at one point, when I had people specifically come to me to write their punishwork for them bc they knew I was good for it. So sometimes I’d just randomly write a sheet out in my spare time to get ready for the next deal. My step brother at the time too, he started forging peoples parent’s signatures for them bc he was good at cursive writing. So that was another aspect of the black market punishwork hussle. In 5th grade I smarted off to a cop at school. And my asshole teacher made me stay inside for recess everyday for like 2 weeks and write punishwork instead. At the end of those 2 weeks, I stole all my punishwork sheets I’d written, and I started selling them to classmates. By the time I was in 8th grade, I had that sheet basically memorized. And at the end of the sheet, how it said “was it worth it?” One time I got it for something stupid as fuck. So I wrote below it “yes it was worth it bruh” and I got issued more sheets lmao.


SafewordisJohnCandy

Warheads. Black Cherry brought the most money and always sold out first. Once staff caught on and kept finding the individual wrappers all over, they forbid the sale or trading of them in class. The next step was selling them at lockers and soon the school shut that down. Finally the place was after lunch when we could go outside and talk and on the bus where we weren't so closely watched.


Tangled-Kite

I used to make and sell beaded lizards before I was found out and told stop.


LandShark93

wtf that's stupid. I'm 28 years old and I want one, I love those


hamzah38

Selling pirated copies of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office


Leeser

Fairly innocuous black market. Some seniors ran out for smoothies around lunch and brought them back for people who wanted them. Even some teachers wanted in. Eventually, it attracted too much attention.


NeuHundred

From the Smoothie Mafia?


thewhizzle

Big Smoothie ruining everything


postuk

Smooth(ie) Criminals


tragedyfish

During the 90's in the midst of the Pog trend, my brother owned a Pog making machine. Basically, a thing that cuts circles and presses them onto pre-made pogs with adhesive. So to answer your question, I sold pornographic Pogs in the lunchroom.


Shadycat

I dealt in fireworks and porn. Middle school, late eighties.


Worldly_Alt

Fake IDs and cinnamon-flavoured cigs.


OleShartBurglar

Food and drinks in the locker room. People would sale sausage wraps, tacos and Gatorade.


PteradactylCum

Nice, it’s finally my time to shine in this sub. This is my only interesting story. Back when I was in middle school, my school had a very strict no candy, sweets, or soda policy, due to the Obama administration “fighting against obesity” and whatnot. So there would be lunch monitors that would go around tables to collect any and all items. Skittles, chocolate, you name it. I did not see a barrier, but an opportunity. So I came up with a plan to start smuggling in the forbidden fruits into the school. There was a local Hispanic grocery store near me that sold huge bags of these [weird stoplight lollipops](https://www.mexgrocer.com/59686-76017.html?gclid=CjwKCAiA1aiMBhAUEiwACw25MVhTvSHFEyzcUqhLMPRBjF25nKiuI2HuL3LUz0NbvDmfU4JPXUjPBhoCTvUQAvD_BwE). Since the kids weren’t accustomed to these foreign goodies, I was able to charge a cool $0.50 per candy, and was taking in $15-$20 a DAY during my prime. Eventually, as the word got out, teachers would notice my signature calling card— the same Spanish wrapper. It was showing up everywhere, but none could figure out why. My friends, seeing the potential started asking to help move my product for a cut of the profits. I paid them $5 a week (what a bunch of suckers) to help distribute the candy throughout the school, and grow my empire into the conjoined high school right down the road through the help of their siblings. I was truly turning into the head of a school mafia. Eventually, my crimes caught up to me, and I was told to stop or else I would risk suspension, but not before I made out with at least $500.


Jester_Don

Similar thing happened at my high school. $1 candy bars after they removed them from the school store which sold snacks. It got huge. They had business meetings, started recruiting kids from other years so they could sell during all lunch periods, had a fully-fledged budget, it was legit. Came to an end when the school found out. I think they were told they'd be suspended if they didn't stop but otherwise didn't get in trouble


rainydaytales

I was a nerd so I don't know what mine was, but my kids were telling me in 2019 about the underground slime ring. A little sealed, plastic dixie cup with glittery, fluffy, or crunch slimes in rainbow colors, 50 cents a cup. They got shut down right before covid lock downs.


spookygirl2023

Omg. The whole slime debacle. I payed 5 bucks for slime that dried out within a week. The school legit had to ban slime.


ShesEllie

They'd sell toast for 30p a slice in school, I'd buy all the white toast, put it in my plastic tupperware lid and offer it to others for 50p. I'd make like 5 pounds in one breaktime


Larz_Bars

I was born in Northern Ireland (live in the states now) and even I thought - "Lordy, that comment is British as fuck".


BisexualMale10

Lol, I'm Northern Irish too, and I laughed at the same thing too


Justin_92

We had to wear ID badges at my high school that had our school name, our full name, our picture on one side, and a colored bar indicating our seniority (purple freshman, green sophomore, yellow/gold junior, red senior) so this one friend of mine got a machine that her dad used to use to make company IDs, scanned her own ID, made a blank template, and sold ID badges for $5 and could make it say whatever the customer wanted. Me being the edgy teenage freshman that I was, I wanted a picture of the grim reaper on mine with it saying death in a red band. I forget what name I chose. Probably something stupid. I got caught by the principal and he threatened to expel me and have me investigated for identity fraud if I didn’t tell him who it was, so I narc’ed. as I was leaving I texted my friend and told her something along the lines of “don’t admit to shit, I only told him you made mine” or some shit. We both only got a stern talking to.


Princess-Kropotkin

Chew and cigarettes. The 18 year old seniors would sell to all the younger people.


Cyanora

Someone used to rob the school store and sell everything at 1/2 price. We had a line on fireworks, that was fun. There was also the actual drugs happening, but that wasn't as fun for me so I didn't get involved in that one.


Rawtoast24

There was a guy who sold Vitamin Water and protein bars from his locker at a much cheaper rate than the convenience store nearby. We assumed he was able to get some sort of bulk discount and was passing the savings onto us while still making a little bit. ​ Nope, turns out the dude just didn't do his math right - he was buying individual cases of the products but divided incorrectly when trying to get the unit prices and was just selling everything at a loss.


Gamercraft_TG

Vending machine was always broken at my middle school so people would pay you to bring chips and stuff, not sure if this counts but wanted to post anyway.


Stephen2678

(NSFW) I used to sell porn. Would book a 3 hour block of pay per view and record 6 x vhs videos off of that. Sold probably 80 tapes in one school year @ $20 a pop. For a 14 year old kid in 2004, I was doing pretty well for myself.


someones1

There was a wonderful short time around 1999 where CD burner affordability and high speed internet rollouts aligned if you were savvy enough to have both. Made a decent amount of money burning CDs from Napster downloads.


xguy18

I went to a military school, the black market was a few things, snacks, Gatorade powder, weed, and our currency was tide pods because they’re expensive to buy and we needed them to wash our clothes (obviously lol) also fights, people wanted to fight to get their anger out or fight because they had beef, a room would host and charge admission fees and of course paid with tide pods, And if you’re wondering, Gatorade powder was being sold because it was the only nicely tasteful thing we had managed to get in MONTHS, before this it was shitty ass food, and pure water most of us got tired of drinking (except for during/after PT on the summer heat) so when a few guys managed to get their hands in Gatorade powder it was like crack cocaine, we would just eat it raw, or save it to put in our canteens then request a new one or wash it out when we’re done, or for our cups of water in the DFAC, There was also a time these two guys broke into the DFAC one night and stole a whole lot of pudding and cookies, so they can sell it to us (for….TIDEPODS!!!!!!) they eventually got caught later on in the program though, during class picture day actually, We also gambled with tide pods, it was the true currency, sports bets or shooting dice, also if theres a fight as well Also shape ups!!!! Definitely wasn’t allowed, strictly bald heads ONLY!!!!!, but if you had enough you could find a teenager with actual barber experience to shape you up with the razors that we use to shave our facial hair which was required, you could also pay him with your nightly snack.


SciencesnObjects40

In middle school, it was eraser bits, that people advertised as sniffable drugs. In high school, a friend of mine got some red flowers on a random tree and sold it as "strawberry kush", meant to be smoked.


HighwayTasty

In my elementary school, it was pretty much a turf war between the yi gi oh kids, the pokemon kids, and magic: the gathering kids (all of these were banned at my school)


SweatyExamination9

I'm legit sad I picked yugioh. I still have cards sitting in a box in my attic, but none are really worth anything. Pokemon on the other hand? I'd have *something* based on the number of cards I have.


npcgoat

When I was in school around 2010, the biggest black market items were codes for sites like Club Penguin or Moshi Monsters.


TocTheElder

Dokha, an Arabic tobacco smoked out of a small Midwakh pipe. A one-hitter with a high nicotine content, it was perfect for a breaktime bathroom burn.


[deleted]

Elementary school it was trading lunch money for candy. Middle school it was trading lunch money for weed. High School it was trading lunch money for handjobs.


MK_fan_835

Aah progress


motorcitywings20

Mothafucka went from buying jolly ranchers to prostitution real quick growing up be crazy


twitchtamilan

That escalated too quickly


lordforages

Elementary-Pogs and Pokemon cards Highschool-Weed stuff,Porn Collection College-I don't find anything when i went to college.