11. Gun
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.
We’d get some interesting stuff from crime scenes, police evidence, ect. But the most questionably disposed of item was a Smith and Wesson revolver from a police department in Virginia, in a box of evidence. Should have kept my mouth shut and kept that one.
12. Quite a haul
I think the most useful thing I found was a 15-foot logging chain. It must have weighed 40 pounds, and I use it on my tractor. Other than that…
Two Egyptian Papyrus paintings, framed.
3 Mountain bikes- one had a loose rear axle (tightened the nut, had it fixed in seconds) the others had flat tires.
12 working VCRs. With LOTS of VHS porn.
An entire box of new-in-wrapper embossed steel Rolling Rock Beer signs. Sold them on Ebay for over $300.
13. Bug Lady
One of the floors in the building had a huge problem with bugs. One night I was collecting the trash off the floor when I noticed she had very carefully decorated a cardboard box to look like a hotel, and had a sign inviting people to drop any bugs they found inside. It was weird, but I figured she was just collecting proof of the bug problem to get management to do something about it.
A few weeks later, I turned the corner to her cubicle, and it was covered in bugs. There were about 20, tacked up all over with pushpins. And they were BEDAZZLED. Each of these bugs had its own unique pattern.
After we told management about it they finally did bring an exterminator in! We still talk about the “bug lady” to this day.
14. Very nice
I once found a big black dildo that was around 10 inches long and a good 2 1/2 inches wide. We promptly decided to play tag with it and eventually fastened it to the front of the truck.
15. Wow!
My ex’s dad was a garbage man for a decade. He told me once while drunk he found ton of cash in a recycling box and pocketed it before tossing it in the back of the truck. Said it was almost $3K in a rubber band.
16. Smorgasbord
Not me, but my Dad was garbage man. He found his share of cool stuff. he worked from 1969-1989 for the DSNY. I still have a lamp made from an old brass fire extinguisher that he found, like many others, he found lots of TV’s, some new clothes (usually at Christmas time – that is why we always went through the wrapping paper), baseball cards by the box, wish I kept those, some WWII stuff, most notably an SS Dagger – but one of the wings of the eagle was broken and attached with scotch tape. Stamps, cause I collected them when I was a kid. I have a Hitler postage stamp somewhere from this.
17. Gangster
I was a garbage man for a number of years in the early 90s. I live in a very small town that is mostly Italian, and one morning we were sent out to collect the dumpster from a trucks top on the outskirts of town. As the truck was pouring the contents of the dumpster into the back, I saw a wet box break apart and inside were a bunch of submachine guns and magazines of ammo.
I stopped the winch, told the driver, and we both decided to play dumb (not difficult) and pretend we didn’t see them. So I continued on and crushed it all as though I hadn’t seen them.
I just remember being afraid that they were dropped off for a pickup or exchange and if some saw me taking them or I was found with them, it’d be a really bad day for me.
18. Sounds safe…
In an old school, a forgotten high school chemistry lab from the 60s. Jars and jars of things like thermite, sticks of yellow phosphorous submerged in some yellow-colored liquid that had evaporated to the point where there was only 1/8″ of liquid covering the top of the sticks and the slightest movement would cause the top end of the sticks to be uncovered.
This was all on the same racks as a jar of mercury, about a pound of powdered asbestos, spools of magnesium ribbom, quantities of powdered sulfur, nitroglycerin, potassium permanganate, cans that had rusted through (they still contained – something – but the labels were too corroded to read), acid nitric and too many other bottles to read as just being in that room for a couple of minutes gave me a splitting headache.
It had apparently been a well-stocked chemistry lab for high school students decades previously then one day the school closed so they locked the door and nobody had entered it (much less cleaned it out) for decades.
19. Yikes!
A severed arm with no hand… At first I thought it was from an animal until I looked closer in horror that it clearly was a human elbow.
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