I have a friend who works as a bookkeeper during the week and as a landscaper in the evenings and on weekends. Another friend’s side gig is fixing cars. Yet another moonlights as a Снегурочка (Snow Maiden) during the winter holidays in Russia and her husband sticks on a white beard and accompanies her as a Дед Мороз (Grandfather Frost). All of these people have jobs, but also side incomes known as халтура.

Now, the word халтура is tricky. On one hand it means “moonlighting” or “side gig”. Then again, its other meaning is “shoddy work”.

I recently spoke with an elderly Russian lady who recalled the times she worked as a human computer at a large construction organization back in the days before the computers as we know them existed. The pay was not enough to feed the family and она брала халтуру на дом (she worked from home on side projects) or подхалтуривала. These projects included calculations for some urgent high profile projects, so the quality of her халтура (side gig) had to be high and not at all халтурный (shoddy). She simply could not afford to халтурить на своей халтуре (to do a poor job with her side gig).

Let’s see more examples:

Дима халтурит на стройке can mean both “Dima moonlights at a construction job” and “At a construction site Dima works poorly”.

Well, how can you tell which one is it?

Most of the time it is obvious from the context:

С молотка

     литература пущена.

Где вы,

   сеятели правды

                 или звёзд сиятели?

Лишь в четыре этажа халтурщина…

Literature is

auctioned off.

Where are you,

heralds of truth

or star-shiners?

Only shoddy work four stories tall…

… wrote Soviet poet V. Mayakovsky in the hardly-ever-quoted poem Четырёхэтажная халтурщина (The four-storied shoddy work).

Other times it’s the adjectives in front of халтура that will give you a good idea of the meaning:

откровенная халтура or явная халтура means blatant or obviously shoddy work as in

Диму уволили, потому что то, что он делал было откровенной халтурой – Dima was fired because the work he did was blatantly shoddy.

отвратительная халтура means disgusting shoddy work

“Отвратительная халтура. Просто позор!”, сказал заказчик, увидев Димину работу – “This is a disgustingly bad work. What a shame!”, said the client checking out Dima’s work.

Then again, if someone says Мне тут халтура подвернулась, he means he found a fairly easy and quick way to make some money on the side. If this same person then gets paid from his халтура, goes out and buys a flat-screen TV that doesn’t work well, that’s already the other халтура (badly made product of shoddy work).

Interestingly, the word халтурщик  is always negative, meaning “a slacker”:

Англичане недоумевают, как “халтурщик” Аршавин мог стать спортсменом года в России – Brits are puzzled how slacker Arshavin managed to become Russia’s athlete of the year. (headline of this article)

Another word for подработка (side income) is шабашка as in

Отец был знающим электриком, так что ему постоянно подворачивалась шабашка – Father was a good electrician, so there were always opportunities for side income.

Если где-то есть шабашка, то я только рад возможности подзаработать – I always gladly take any opportunity to make some money on the side.

Someone who engages in шабашка or шабашит (works on the side) is known as шабашник:

Шабашник с дипломом юриста подозревается в совершении краж – A temp worker with a law degree is suspected of committing theft. (true story, here’s the article, but basically it’s about a law school graduate who worked part-time gigs at construction sites and stole building materials from those same sites)