Matthew's Journal

You have my sympathy. I'm often stuck in a hut^H^Hotel in the middle of nowhere for weeks on end, with only work to entertain me. The weeks I spent in Germany earlier this year were particularly like that, with no town worth going out to, and nobody to go with anyway. It's probably worse when you're *so close* to home, but can't get there.

Er... in answer to your question - I suppose there's not much harm asking, it might irritate some people but you can ignore them. Students are well known for doing implausible things for money :-)

I would say it would really depend on what the Vet School would say if they knew, and possible repercussions.

We have on-call rota for a week at a time. We get a sum of money as a flat rate for the week, then extra per call-out, depending on time that call-out took. We hate being on call. We have been known to send out emails to the department asking for volunteers asking people to do our shifts, both swapping weeks, and offering hard cash on top of what the company would pay whoever was on call. I don't know that the latter has worked, but it's not frowned upon, and managers are perfectly aware of it.

We've also had times when someone is strapped for cash, and has put out a blanket offer to anyone, that they'll do their on-call shifts for them (getting the usual overtime money). I like it when people sned those emails out :-)

So, I would say - find out what the superiors/dept. heads, would think about it, then go for it. Remember to only offer what you don't mind giving - could always offer to cook for them/do odd jobs for them instead... free bike repairs? :-)