Any advice on doing casual labor for people and getting ripped off? - eviltoast

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/237678

I do a bunch a odd jobs for people that I get via asking around. The jobs don’t get protection from government or business, you might get my drift if you’ve ever been poor.

It happens a lot, like for 25% of jobs that I do for people that I get ripped off. I’ll be snow plowing someone’s lot every time it snows for all of winter, and they pay me immediately after each plowing. Once the weather starts improving, I do a job for them and then they ghost me without paying me. It happens occasionally where they don’t have the cash on hand (these jobs only are cash, no etransfer possible, cryptocurrency is a possibility if they had it) and they say they’ll pay me next time and they usually do, so when they say they’ll pay me next time and just ghost me, i have no advance warning.

Is there like any anarchist contract/tips I could consider using? For some people, I offer them a receipt/ask them for a receipt, but they don’t want any paper trial leading to them, so they refuse.