Weirdest Job I Had on UpWork — Pretending to Be Someone Else
I’d be a top-notch spy, just saying.
I didn’t do anything special to land this opportunity. I had posted my offer on UpWork for a person looking for an editor and copywriter. The “person” then turned out to be a start-up company based in China.
I won’t state their name, but I hope they finally got things figured out. They offered me a contract position after seeing some of my work and an interview.
The job description was defined as being a “translator”, where I would edit documents into easier to read English and clear up any grammatical errors. The target audience was American clients, where we’d offer anything from graphic design to actual software development.
But after getting the interview, having a face-to-face Zoom call, I was offered the role of just speaking, meaning I would pretend to be somebody else and just talk. They liked my voice and charisma.
The goal was to use my American accent and help connect the company to Americans in a better way. I wasn’t allowed to show my face and would only speak and text the clients.
I was given first-hand knowledge on many topics, such as graphic design, software programming, and other technical and difficult concepts.
I had to do lots of studying because I was pretending to be an expert in these fields, where in actuality I had a team of experts working behind the scenes. I was just the voice.
It was exciting and scary. I had a zoom call with people who would ask questions such as, “what can you tell us about this web-page design?” and “does this kind of coding work with WordPress?”.
I didn’t know anything other than the stuff I had quickly learned before.
I had to speak slowly as if I were thinking something big. I took Elon Musk’s style of speaking as if all my knowledge was being sifted through in order to find a simple explanation.
I would quickly text the team for answers while I kept the clients satisfied. Sometimes, I would even make them laugh. These were very smart and intelligent people so it made me feel good.
Why I Quit…
After a week, I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was starting to believe I was someone else. I also felt dishonest, as though I were lying to people, and that I would end up in jail for doing this.
I didn’t do a bad job and could have kept going but it wasn’t worth the stress. I would have gained lots of knowledge and first hand experience talking about graphic design, programming, and troubleshooting, but what if I got caught?
Regardless, the experience was nuts and gave me a taste for acting. I didn’t get paid either, which is funny because of how much I studied for the meetings.
If someone has a strange UpWork experience they’d like to share then I’d be happy to hear it.
