A huge stash of porn magazines, chains, dildos, whips all kinds of sex toys. In amongst them were hundreds of loose polaroid photos which we had a brief look at before promptly closing the site and calling in the police. Boy and a girl, couldn't have been older than 7 or 8 the pair of them... We recognised the other items in the photographs.

IlCattivo91

My father in law is a bin man here in Northern Ireland. He is forever bringing home stuff he finds on his rounds, most recently a Tag Heuer watch and more iPhones than you could shake a stick at

Guy even has a huge jar filled with coins he finds - all the guys he work with dump any loose change or notes they come across into it throughout the year and they split it between them at Christmas

GoodnightKevin

I did junk removal for a while and we used to clean out estates of people who died. You can find some nice records or old furnitures that would end up be worth lots of money.

One day, after a third week straight of cleaning out estates of the deceased, my coworker and I stood still in this old woman's living room, and kinda just stopped. We realized the value of someone after they pass, or rather, the lack thereof. Here we are throwing out photo albums, books, journals, note cards: all things that were once valuable to somebody. But now they are just being chucked to a garbage truck without any thought.

All those things that a person has spent their lifetime accumulate, ended up meaning nothing. Often the children come and sort out some stuff, but most of the time it's just "get rid of everything". It made me realize that accumulating material goods is really a futile way of living. You can't take it to the grave (most of the time), and it just end up in a line fill. Jabronis like us would try to make a buck out of the candle sticks that you so adored and thought your children would definitely take. It is morbid to think that we are just literally throwing away someone's life and memory.

I don't know, just something to think about. Collect experiences, as those can not be taken by anyone. If the choice is between that nice watch and a weekend trip to Mexico, probably choose the latter.

reddit

Garbage man here. Opened the lid and had a dead deer head staring right at me. Damn near pooped. Also have found; working Xbox, Bluetooth headphones, lots of porn, and a safe that had 7 grand in it once we bust it open.

reddit

Created an account just to relate this story my old man has been telling me for as long as I can remember.

When my dad was young and I was a baby, he worked at Silver State Disposal in Nevada. We lived in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas, until mid-1988 (dodged a serious bullet by moving east a month prior to the PEPCON explosion).

My old mans' role there was primarily as a diesel mechanic, but on days where the collectors wouldn't show up, he would get some overtime in and help with collection.

So one morning he's getting his time and a half in, they are collecting in a large development, very high end homes. And he always phrases this next part the exact same way:

"I found a leg in the fourth trash can I opened, and I thought someone had thrown out a prosthetic, it just didn't look real. It wasn't until I found her head 10 minutes later that I realized I had thrown away a severed leg."

The driver of the truck contacted their dispatcher, who in turn contacted the police & sent out additional trims to search the trash cans. Seven pieces were found; (dad found right leg/head), torso, arms x2, left leg, and a stray breast.

Sesstuna

My dad found a grenade as a Toronto garbage man in the 70s. Claims he pulled the pin and tossed it into a field. When it didn't go off, he let me and my brother play with it as children.

careshel

Hands down though the worst thing we've ever had on site was a miscarriage. The plant driver luckily saw it before he ran over everything in the machine but f**k, that was horrific. Someone had just thrown it away in the bin. That was another whole Police thing too.

IlCattivo91

Janitor at a grocery store, and I found a full box of wine, sealed, tagged at just over 30 bucks.

x352439x

When I was in the penitentiary I worked on a trash truck where we picked up trash from the local schools. One of them had a compactor. Upon arrival I walk up to it and as im about to push the compact button a black bear pokes his head out. Frightened the hell out of me. My boss man and I threw rocks at the compactor and scared the bear off.

edubinthehills

While at uni I had about 600 different casual jobs. One of them was on a recycling truck.

What I found crazy about the job, seriously, was the amount of people, mostly OAPs, who would stand in the front yard and hand you a beer or a 6-pack as you collected their recycling bags.

We got so f**ken drunk picking up people's rubbish.

instorg8a

My uncle is a retired new york city waste disposal engineer and I have an unequaled collection of awthentiq seized Rolex watches as a result.

ontopic

A perfectly good white boy.

KorbenDallas11

My cousin is a garbage man and a damn honest one at that, I trust him with my deepest darkest secrets. So I know he would never lie or exaggerate anything, but this mother f**ker saw a pair of Siamese twin fetuses. I say fetuses because they were both aborted.

G-manP

Im Not a garbage man (or woman). My dad put my dead dog into the trash can. He was found dead in the backyard one morning and he figured he would just toss him :(. My brother abruptly told the trash man "it's heavy because our dog is in there." Oh childhood memories.

reddit

I worked as a summer student at a landfill "directing traffic". One day, a customer came in and asked for a hole to be dug as he wanted something to be buried. He was driving an all black cadillac with tinted windows and some seriously nice rims. The somewhat lazy machine operator was reluctant to dig a hole as it required switching machines, so he offered the animal pit instead. Half-expecting a dead body, I watched as he threw out what appeared to be a book. Once he drove off, I held my breath and peered into the animal pit, only to find a (presumably) family photo album with a knife lodged right in the middle. It still gives me the creeps.

Voicecrack

I worked as a waste disposal dude one summer. Found a few thousand dollars in counterfeit money.

orgasmic_spoons

This was in the 90s... my friend's dad found a big sack full of arcade tokens. Not sure how it is now, but back then the tokens were mostly standardized. My friend was in heaven.

theoptionexplicit

This was in the early 90's. I was emptying the public trash cans in a city centre in mid England. I saw this really expensive bound leather photograph holder book. I took it lobbed it in the cab to check out later.

After work I started looking through it and it started with these fresh faced young soldiers laughing and gurning at the camera. They were doing their training I think in some leafy camp in England. Then it switched to a f**k hole awful desert - it was the time of Gulf War I. The smiles went and then the carnage came. Busted tanks, cars and people. Fires, death and destruction. Almost unrecognizable burnt corpses. Just horrible, horrible s**t.

Then I stopped looking and threw it away as the owner had intended. I often wonder who threw that away, I hope it was the soldier trying to forget rather than one of his grieving relatives. That was more than 20 years ago but I think of that poor boy a lot.

reddit

My good friend who used to work at a recycling plant found an Enigma machine. That's an encryptment device the nazis used. It was worth like 10.000 dollars.

DarkPasta

A friend of mine worked for garbage collecting and later at a sorting facility. He made a very decent business selling all sorts of electronics and appliances people would leave at the free drop-off point.

He had hundreds of old computers. Commodores, Amigas, old Mac's and gaming consoles (pre PS/Xbox). He'd switch around the dead parts (if any), re-solder components, clean everything in some alcohol solution where you dip the whole chip board. He even used some sort of chemical that would de-age the plastic. You know how old plastic goes all yellow, he wiped this solution on it and left for a day or so and it would look just like new.

micge

A friend whose dad was a garbageman (distant I know but still) once told me he found an engagement ring and a pack of condoms in a small disposable bag, he always wanted to know the story behind it.

YouKnowABitJonSnow

Had a college classmate who worked summers at his uncle's dump on Staten Island. He HATED the job so much but three months paid off a year of school tuition/living. He found a human finger once. Lots of bodily excretions in containers. Bags of brand new (possibly unsold) clothing.

He also got paid $20 per big black garbage bag to separate recyclables out of it (which he insisted the smell/sight isn't worth the money). How many he got through in a day, I don't know.

hothotsauce

My dad found a wire-tapping kit and a black berry. He gave them to me. I pawned both and then we ate soft tacos.

Weeperblast

Police in the local area had busted a huge cannabis grow house and brought all the equipment for growing to our site, we're talking about thousands of pounds (£'s not lbs) of lighting, timers, ventilation systems, hydroponics, the full monty. We're not allowed to take things home from the site. Unrelated bit of information, a friend of mine is growing cannabis now.

IlCattivo91

I worked as sort of a secondary garbage man (I was on the truck when they needed an extra hand or the main guy was sick) and from the short time I have a list of the things I found. And some of the more valuable things the other guys acquired. Mind you this is from a small canadian town.

A working PS3. A working iphone 4, (this was before the 5 was introduced) 2 laptop computers. (Monitors were broken, and nothing else) Multiple desktop PCs. An fm transmitter. Every tool you would ever need. An n64 with a few games. 5 bottles of unopened hard liquor. All sorts of hunting equipment. And furniture. Lots of good furniture that I ended up refurbishing and selling.

A lot of what I found was technology, simply because I had an eye for it.

The main garbage man had a room in his house dedicated to the things he found. From $400 snowboards to full toolboxes and audio systems. And the truck driver made about an extra $500 every two months from recycling cans people would throw out.

I also stumbled across a $100 bill once at the landfill.

captainfantastyk