24 Garbage Men Reveal The Ridiculous Things They’ve Found While Working

1. Not a garbage man, but…

I once saw a crow fly away with half a roll of toilet paper from a trash can. It had a 3 foot or so trail behind it. I am not a garbage man, but that was some funny shit, and where else am I going to post this?

2. People will throw anything away

I was a driver for a large company with green trucks. People will throw ANYTHING away. Skinned sheep heads. Gigantic, soiled sex toys. Deer stomachs. One house had 15 bags of nearly-new, designer clothes in the trash each week for almost a month. Move-out piles were the worst. People would toss out what seemed like the entire contents of the house, and it would take us 15 minutes to load the truck, then we would fill up early and have to run to the landfill, and it would screw the whole day.

Found some good stuff, too. An entire box of brand-new, embossed metal Rolling Rock Beer signs that I sold on EBay for $400. An unopened box of copper tubing. My loader found two 1920’s baseball cards worth several thousand dollars.

3. Bad things happen in threes

I remember one day doing residential pickup out in the county (who only got monthly pickups) I dumped a can that was about a third full of magots.Like, nothing else in the can but magots.I don’t even know how that would happen.Another time I tossed these three insanely heavy duty bags into the packer that seemed to be full of liquid.When I jumped out at the next stop, I turn to throw in another can and see the bags are ballooning under the stress of the packer and they’re gonna blow.So I jump out of the way as they blow and just missed being covered in a rain of liquid dog shit that went half way across the street.The person had shoveled up three bags of snow and dog shit from their yard and it had melted in the spring sun.We laughed pretty hard at the shitsplosion covering the street, but I couldn’t imagine what I would have done if I had been standing in the way.Lastly, A dude I worked with dummped a frontload bin that unbeknownst to him contained a hobo.Luckily he heard him screaming before crushing him to death.

4. That smell

Some sick fuck had a trash can filled with rotting dead cats. The smell is unforgettable.

5. He was super mad

When I was eight years old I lived in an apartment complex and there was this one maintenance guy that went around the neighborhood picking up trash. He looked super pissed off all the time. There was once a huge pile of garbage that fell out of a bag that fell out of the trunk of someone’s car that was going by. I watched it fall out and continued to play outside for about ten hours. I went back to the place the garbage bag fell and there it was, still lying in the middle of the street.

A few minutes later the pissed off looking garbage dude drove his golf cart over and saw the bag with the spilled out stuff everywhere. He looked at it for a second then screamed at the top of his lungs.

“FUCKIN’ SHIT GOD FUCKING DAMMIT ARE YOU GOD DAM FUCKING KIDDING ME FUCK. FUCK! FUCKIN FUCK! FUCKING BULLSHIT!”

He continued to scream and curse for at least a solid two minutes and when he stopped he looked over at little eight year old me just staring at him with a shocked look on my face. I was the only one around that saw that. He looked away, sighed and picked up the garbage. Now whenever I’m feeling down, I think of pissed off garbage guy and how it could be way worse.

6. Words of wisdom

One dumpster I get always has skinned raccoons in it, it had a deer hide in it for a few months because it was frozen to the bottom.

Another dumpster was completely filled up with onions. nothing else, just onions. This house is way out in the middle of nowhere.

Schools are terrible because apparently they don’t dump their excess milk down the drain so there is always a good 3 inches in the bottoms of certain dumpsters. 3 inches of cheese when it’s hot.

Some people throw out things that I cannot understand how they expect one guy to be able to pick up. How in the hell am I supposed to take a hot tub? I did it, but it was difficult.

Also if someone throws away something that says DO NOT OPEN! on it, its probably best to not open it, there will be a dead cat in there

7. Made a garbage man puke

Had a fridge that we moved houses with. Originally had around 30 – 40 pounds of chinook and halibut. We instructed the movers to plug it back in immediately when it got to the new house…. they didn’t.

I go to open the freezer 3 days later and it had to be the worst smell I have ever experienced. It hit me with force and i immediately retreated outside gagging. Both my brother and father came into the garage to see what the hell was going on and they start gagging.

We finally close it and wrap it closed with duct tape (it was a lost cause). Using a friends truck we took it to the dump to drop it off. On the way no one would follow behind us as the smell seeped out. So we drop it off and right as we are on the way out we see one of the workers cut the duct tape and take a peek inside. My guess is in case explosives or whatnot. He immediately slams it closed and starts gagging. It took 30-40 lbs of 4 day rotten fish to make a man who works with garbage toss his lunch.

If it is closed, do not open.

8. They probably had a great time

Last party I went to the host was throwing out a big dresser and some people had to puke so he said “NO DON’T PUKE ON MY LAWN JUST PUKE IN THE DRESSER”.

Garbage Day was the next day I feel bad for the people who threw it away. I can only imagine picking it up and the drawers slide and puke just oozing out of several drawers.

9. Potty potty potty

Toilets are fun to pick up! I was a driver, but every time there was a toilet in the trash I would run back just to smash it. We pulled up to a house that had a toilet out once. My loader, Wayne, got off the back of the truck and picked up the bags.

I leapt out of the cab, ran back saying, “Potty, potty, potty, potty!” grabbed the toilet, lifted it over my head, and whipped it into the truck. It exploded with a satisfying boom, and I ran back up and leapt back into the cab.

The homeowner was standing there, watching. Wayne said to her, “We’re still not quite sure what is wrong with him.”

10. Only in New Orleans!

Not mine but we had a maintenance man in our old apartment who found a taxidermied dead raccoon dressed in a baby/toddler t-shirt along with a taxidermied alligator. (Things you’ll see in New Orleans.)

11. A tip?

Found a drawer with $100 in it. One crisp $100 note. Maybe they were a cartel boss at the very start of their business.

12. Just out the window they went

I’m not a garbage man, but I was the groundskeeper at a townhouse complex. One morning while making my rounds for litter clean-up, I found a full, un-opened box of condoms thrown away in the bushes outside the unit where a teenage girl lived. I thought it was maybe just a coincidence. Maybe some passerby threw it in there.

Then two weeks later, in the same bushes, I found a used pregnancy test. I laughed pretty hard.

13. The most coveted card of all

Not disgusting, but I once found a holographic Charizard card.

14. Dodge a bullet there

Not exactly a bin man but I did garbage cleanup at a park for a handful of years.

Was waiting for this group at a pavilion to leave so I could start the cleanup.

Drive around for a bit and come back about 10 minutes later and theres only 2 people left. I figure if theres only 2 left, they’re probably leaving shortly and I can start cleaning stuff up. As I’m walking up the guy hails me, says “Hey theres still a buncha leftovers here, you want anything?” We’re told not to accept food handouts from customers, so I passed. Figure if they’re still eating I should probably come back a little later still.

As I’m driving off I see the guy lift up the trash can lid and grab something out of the bin to put on his plate. They weren’t actually part of the party, just some random people that offered me food from a garbage can.

15. Wonderful. Just wonderful

I work for a biohazard company. One time I went to pick up waste from a hospital and there was a 2 week old leg sticking out of a container.

16. I’d be glad to take those off your hands

Not a garbage man but used to be a construction/remodeling contractor. At one house we were doing some stuff to fix the place up as the homeowner moved out. He had a big 20 foot dumpster that he was filling with the stuff that he didn’t want to move the 5 miles across town to his new place and he told us to feel free to fish stuff out. I got a PS1 system including controllers and cables, a ton of Nintendo Advanced games, a big roll of field fencing, and a white gold necklace with some diamonds and a broken but repairable gold chain, plus a bunch of other quality randomness. I just don’t understand how people can be so wasteful but I am more than willing to take advantage of said wastefulness.

17. “Free food, amirite?”

Former Garbage man…. Used Toilet paper. All the time. Nothing worse than having a bag break and spew out mounds of used toilet paper like some type of unrighteous pinata. Honestly the most disgusting thing I ever saw though, was a co-worker who regularly ate/drank things we found in the trash.

18. Free money

Not me, but my sister. She worked for waste management for the past 8 years. I don’t know if you guys know about waste management, but they don’t only go to neighborhoods. They also go to businesses and schools. They can take whatever they want from the trash, as long as 1) it’s not an illegal substance or prescription medicine 2) It has private information on it or 3) It’s something that can be sold for scrap metal.

Other than that, everything is pretty much free game. Well, about 3 years ago she had a stop at a pretty big school in our district. They had boxes and boxes of trash. Alot of it was computer equipment. She is a pretty big techie, and decided to look through some of it. Most of it was crap stuff, like old mice, monitors, and tv’s. She came upon these 3 huge boxes though. They had 150 IBM Model Ms. I don’t know if you guys know what they are, but they are vintage Mechanical Keyboards, worth about $100 apiece on eBay. I helped her with selling all of them, and we made about 10 grand. She loves her job, and she loves seeing what people throw away

19. Rich people

My dad did the recycling run. In the rich parts of town people would throw away brand new, still in boxes stuff- wine glasses, shoes and more. It amazed me what people would throw away.

20. “Can fairies”

I recently found a partially decomposed raccoon after searching for the source of the worst fucking smell in my life. So I put it in the trash, forgetting that homeless people come by to look through for cans to sell. Next day woke up to that putrified raccoon on our deck and the can fairies won’t talk to us anymore.

21. “It’s like finding a gallbladder in a dumpster”

Not a garbage man, but I used to remove hazardous waste from a large hospital. One day I got called into the OR because some tech had thrown away a gallbladder that needed to be tested for cancer. We called the dumpster company and they came to open it, I then spent the next 3 hours or so going through the dumpster searching for a cancer ridden gallbladder.

22. Trash as treasure

My dad found a huge box of really old matchbox cars in the rubbish once, we got them appraised and they are worth about £3000-£5000 all together.

23. Traumatized for life

One time a dumpster behind a residential motel was filed with gallon jugs of urine. The undocumented extended family in one room were peeing in the jugs so that nobody would guess how many people were living in the room. I typed the box, pulled the lever and got a horrible cold urine shower when the bottles popped. Yes, I went home early.

24. No… :(

A bag of dog heads.

And no, that is not a metaphor.