Side jobs: a good way to make money on the side

[JohnnyJohn]

As the name suggests, this would add jobs accessible via the PDA or some analogue, available to all human jobs. The specific tasks are also unique to respective jobs. For example, an engineer could select a side job to fix a broken drone, which would teleport it in for said engineer to work on. Upon fixing it, the drone would teleport out and the engineer would get paid a decent sum of money. Bartenders and scientists could get jobs to mix and deposit certain cocktails or compounds, staff assistants could fill out (nonsense) surveys for the temp agency that got them aboard, etc.

The point of this is so crew can reliably get some spare change, especially lower-paid crew like civilian staff. The stock market is a nightmare against you, and gambling has never been a reliable and solid method of income.

[Waffleloffle]

this is basically cargo contracts except without having to communicate with cargo

[RSOD]

this is basically cargo contracts except without having to communicate with cargo

i feel this is more of a lite version of cargo contracts, with a much lower gain, at the cost of much less effort. a good few requisitions require a lot of effort and/or are insanely lengthy, like the botany seed requests or the organ requests that can take upwards of half an hour if the departments don't get on your request instantly, or the somewhat less lengthy but still problematic ones that require specific items (like console boards)
having departments do their own stuff also makes the ship feel more like a workplace, alongside giving jobs more tasks to do for quick cash. (because SOMETIMES it's FUCKING ANNOYING waiting for 7 PAYROLLS just to BUY SOMETHING...)

[Solenoid]

Honestly, I love this idea. Cargo reqs are cool and all, but all of that money is going to go to cargo unless you have a cool QM who lets you scan your ID in. Giving players more ways to make money when things are slow seems like a good idea, and can increase the amount of money people are willing to throw around on the job.

Cargo reqs fulfill a completely different niche on the station, and I don't see them becoming irrelevant/ignored if this was to be added. Reqs are how you make money for Cargo to operate, these side jobs would be how you make money to spend on clothing, snacks, clowning supplies, or whatever else. Hell, this may even increase interaction with Cargo by allowing more players to buy crates with their own cash.

I'm personally for this idea, seems cool. 

[Lefinch]

I think the key thing here is that requisitions are QM lead: The QM knows what requisitions there are, what ones they want to try and do, and then engage outwards with departments to try and fill it for their/cargo's/other departments. This idea is the other way around potentially: You know what side jobs there are, what ones you want to do, and then engage with cargo/others to fulfil it for your personal benefit/a gift for others.

Like Solenoid points out, this could be a useful way to drive up engagement with cargo or other departments too. If it used the exact same system as requisitions then sure, I could see that taking away jobs from cargo, but if it's built looking for different tasks to be done then I don't see that being as much of an issue.

EDIT: On the flipside to play advocate: one aspect of being an assistant is that you're there to assist in theory. Nearly all the civilian jobs still have some kind of work to do too. I don't personally see that being too much of a conflict with this system as honestly a lot of assistants don't in fact go assist (and some do!) and it's not caused the collapse of society, and I think the benefit of having a system that drives engagement up with departments outweighs that.

I *also* think it's a nice sneaky excuse as an antag to talk with someone. A nice layer of potential obfuscation for why Jimmy Longstockings suddenly is knocking on a door asking to speak with you out of the blue.

[Tessellation]

I think this would be a fun idea, but it would be nice to have an interaction with the QM of some sort, like having to get a sticker of some sort, or having to send it out via cargo.