Recently, Reddit user u/wayne88imps asked r/AskReddit, "Garbage men/women of the world, what's the best or worst thing you've found 'thrown away'?" Here are some of best, coolest, and weirdest finds!
1. A newspaper from the day after the Challenger exploded.
"I worked as a garbage man for a very short time last summer but the best thing I found was an edition of my local newspaper from the day after the Challenger exploded."
2. An elderly couple's bondage gear.
"My dad’s been a garbage man for 30 years, and on one of his routes he had this supersweet, old couple that always waved hi and brought him snacks. Well, one day, as he was dumping their garbage cans, a bag fell out. Inside was a really nice, black leather leash, which he figured was for a dog. Then he noticed a large, black harness. And then a whip, a ball gag, and a nipple tassel. He quickly realized he was dealing with the elderly couple's bondage gear."
3. James Franco's poetry(!!!!!!).
"James Franco’s handwritten poetry. He was getting his MFA at my school where I did work-study on the garbage/recycling crew. Lots of great and hilarious finds, but that’s the most memorable."
4. A brand-new BMW.
"I cleaned apartments one summer in a college town. Foreign students are notorious for leaving lots of valuables behind. The most outlandish item I came across was a brand-new BMW that they left abandoned in the complex parking lot."
5. A duffel bag with $10,000 in it.
"A lady came in super upset because earlier she threw out a duffel bag that she didn’t know her boyfriend kept cash in. Over $10,000 in cash. We never found the bag."
6. Puppies who became the most perfect family dogs!
"My dad was a garbage man and found my first dog in the trash. My dad stopped, picked up a box, heard some shuffling on the inside, and sure enough, there were two puppies inside. My dad kept one and the driver kept the other. They were brother and sister (my dad assumed). He kept the male and named him Jasper. Jasper was literally my best friend growing up. We had him for 13 years and my dad tells me the job was worth it just for that dog."
7. A diamond worth $3,000!!!
"My grandfather used to work for the city garage and would repair a lot of the trucks, including the garbage truck. He once found a jewelry box that had cheap jewelry in it but he noticed there was a loose stone that looked like a diamond so he kept it. Twenty years later, he finally took it to a jewelry store to see if it was real. It was and it was worth $3,000. He made it into a new wedding ring for my gram."
8. Mr. & Mrs. Smith cardboard cutouts.
"I found a cardboard cutout from the Mr. & Mrs. Smith movie release when it was in theaters. I put Mr. Smith on one side of the truck and Mrs. Smith on the other side. Got a few fun honks going down the road with Brad and Angelina on the back of a trash truck."
9. An alto saxophone.
"When I was a kid, my dad worked for a company that hauled away dumpsters and at one point he found an old alto saxophone complete in its box. I ended up playing it for four years up until high school when it was stolen and I couldn't play after that since my family couldn't afford a rental sax, let alone pay for a new one."
10. An urn filled with someone's ashes(?!?!?!!).
11. A whole bunch of Razor scooters.
"There was one time that a whole fleet of Razor scooters had been thrown out by some store due to minor defects with them. The local kids didn't give a damn about a design issue or if the sticker was on the wrong way. We all had a ball when we got our new (branded to boot) playthings."
12. Used condoms in the recycling.
"I used to collect the recycling rather than the trash. And back then, we had to sort it at the truck if the person hadn't separated. One house repeatedly put used condoms in with the plastics. In the end, my crewmate knocked and informed the 80-something-year-old man that they weren't recyclable."
13. A vintage hand grenade.
"I got a 1944 Mills hand grenade that someone had thrown out."
14. Sheets of Dragon Ball Z cards.
"In the early 2000s, my best friend's dad was a garbage man. I used to hang out at their house a lot and I remember him finding uncut sheets of holographic Dragon Ball Z trading cards in the trash and bringing them back. They were super dope to see."
15. Cold hard cash!!!!!!!!
"My buddy ran maintenance at the local landfill, which is located along an extremely busy highway. One of their duties was to clean up the shoulder of the highway and he would find cash most days on the side of the road. People would drive with their windows down and the dollar bills would fly out the window. Sometimes it would just be $5. But other times, he would pick up as much as $50 to $85."
16. And lastly, an original Mac computer.
"I worked as an IT guy for a school district and one time we had to dump a bunch of outdated electronics. Among the trash was a still-working, perfect-condition Mactintosh 128K, aka the original Apple computer released in 1984. We weren’t allowed to take it but I went back after my shift to look through the dumpster, but the trash had already been taken to the dump. Heartbreaking."
