Garbage Collectors Reveal The Most Outrageous Things People Tried To Throw Out
Ever thought about the things you throw out? Someone out there is gonna see it one last time before it's buried away forever. These people definitely weren't thinking about that when they left these odd things in the trash.
Reddit user Illtema asked:
50. Rich People Are *The Worst*
My friend's dad is the "do everything" kind of man for a CEO of a construction company. He gets asked to throw away jewelries and expensive art artifacts. He also had to get rid of old pick ups (sell them or whatever he could but get rid of them) he could keep the money the CEO doesn't give a sh!t.
49. ADVANCED Pleasure
I was doing waste analysis, collecting people's domestic rubbish and sorting it into categories, producing data for recycling planning. Fairly disgusting job. Anyway, I once found a nice wooden box with a hinged lid, lined with some sort of silky fabric, and in their own specialty shaped little recessed bits lay three large adult toys. One was the size of a fire extinguisher. The thing was scary. No idea why someone would throw them out when they'd clearly been cherished.
48. It's Like A Thrift Shop
I worked ~8 months while waiting to go to school in my small southern town. Summary of interesting things I found go as follows: 20$ , bullets, a live snake, a fully working 400$ amp (which I now use for my speaker setup), and a small bag of marijuana, and a can literally full of adult toys and open DVDs.
47. Wit Beyond Measure Is Man's Greatest Naval Officer Sword
We used to pull the recyclables out of the dumpsters by our rental condo in California. Found a Naval officer's sword, a nice set of cast iron skillets, plus a fantastic handmade leather chair. Still have those in my home. Lots of clothes with tags, pretty sure the residents one unit over were shoplifters and thieves; we took that stuff to the thrift shops.
Then there was Big Trash Day in Japan once a quarter. Fully working treadle sewing machine with a cast iron base, ceramic hibachi pot, marvelous glass and lacquer cases, a giant yellow quartz gem set in silver. A full set of WWII photos and albums, including a Kamikaze farewell party, but a history professor "borrowed" those to examine and never got them back to me.
46. Could Furnish My Whole Life This Way
I lived in a campus town and every year, end of the semester, (especially the end of spring semester) the most amazing stuff would be thrown out. Students (especially foreign students) leaving who had no way to take their stuff with them. Uncounted couches, TVs, furniture, computers, electronics, etc just sitting on the curbs all around the campus. They had to clean the apartment out and they had nowhere to put the stuff but on the curb.
45. College Kids Have No Perception Of Worth
I live in a town with 2 colleges in it and I like to go textbook hunting on move out week. I'll usually pull 2,5-3k in 2 weeks. I've found around 8-9 phones of vary degrees of degradation, around 4 laptops with fixable problems and a closets worth of name-brand clothing. My daily driver timbs are trash boots.
My friend though, after two years of gathering now owns a small business selling and renting what he calls "dorm kits", which usually include a couple lights, chairs, a mini-fridge, a microwave, an electric kettle and other odds and ends. He has a real job but makes about 40k a year supplemental, a lot in cash. (that he keeps in a cardboard box labeled "f--- you money") He will often find 2-3 of the kits he sold outright in the garbage that same year. I'm jealous of his work ethic, because those couple of weeks before/after the semester he works 18 hour days.
TL;DR- if you live near a college there's gold in the garbage.
44. More College Kids
Not a garbageman, but in my college town dumpster diving was a regional sport every May with all the college kids throwing away anything they didn't care to move. My geography professor found a brand new, never used, pair of skis in the trash one year. So, he started a freecycling program, which was an assignment for my honors human geography class.
We picked up unwanted items from the dorms and Greek houses, and held onto them until school started in the fall, when students could have their pick of anything. Certain items, like shoes, went straight to where my professor volunteered in Peru, and anything unused went to Goodwill or another thrift store. Laziness does terrible things when you're young.
43. Throwing Out Trashcans-It's Meta
I've volunteered at neighborhood cleanups and have found some amazing stuff.
I was working the metal bin, but took home a couple nice GT bmx bikes for the kids.
A brand new in the box turkey deep fryer.
Ironically a bunch of brand new trashcans (Rubbermaid brute)
Perfectly fine honda pressure washer.
Commercial paint sprayer.
42. Antiques From The Road-show
I have a (now deceased) friend who basically stocked his antique store with stuff he found on the side of the road.
I'm sort of ashamed to admit it because I feel like it was profiting off the misfortune of others but I lived in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina and I basically rebuilt my house from stuff that people tossed. I was amazed at the amount of stuff people ripped out that was above the waterline.
People would literally hire crews to gut their entire house and they would put everything, and I repeat, everything on the side of the road. At one point there
Some of the stuff I found: AC Units. 2-3 Sub-Zero refrigerators (compressor is on the top, people, there are no electronics in the bottom to get wet). A full room of paneling which I used to panel a small bathroom.
Marble flooring. Attic fans. Solid wood doors. A full vintage porcelain bathroom set (tub, sink, toilet and bidet). A skeleton shower from the 20's ($). Hardwood flooring. Chandeliers. Cabinets. Lots and lots of cypress molding and structural elements.
Also found: TV sets. Computers. 2 grand pianos (flood had discolored legs but not reached the soundboard). 3-4 bedroom sets. A stack of paintings by a well-known LA artist ($$). Lamps. Stereo equipment.
I still have a 3 storage units full of house parts I picked up back then that I have slowly been incorporating into my current home renovation. It was truly a shame to see all this great old stuff be tossed and replaced with Home Depot crap. I could have filled 10 more units with stuff I saw and couldn't store.
41. It's The Little Things
Brother owns a trash company which I worked a lot for during summer breaks. I've found a live possum, which hissed at me. Dead mice. Lots of adult videos. Blow up doll.
The most valuable thing to find is glass handles of vodka. We used to save them in the cab, throw them as high as we could at the dump to hear the most satisfying "pop" you've ever heard. Gotta find little enjoyable things that make you smile while working a literal sh*tty job.
40. Thank You For The A-A-A-A-A-Alcohol
Not a garbage man, but we used to hang out at the dumpster of the local U-Store type place (before the whole Storage Wars thing happened) and first of the month you could find the coolest sh*t in that dumpster.
I remember we got an entire wine making set. And I don't mean a little one, I mean like small scale professional level stuff. Wine corks, multiple heavy glass bottles of all different colors, those huge glass bottles, the hoses and valves, everything.
Basically looked like someone had an entire micro-brewery setup and forgot to pay the rent on his box. Whoopsie.
39. Ten Men Wearing The Same Garbage
I worked as garbage man last year as a summer job. One day a man came by who said he lost a high sum of money and he wants us to look for it. The money was in an envelope and he said it was € 10.000+. He said he wanted to bring the money to the bank and stashed it between some old newspaper he wanted to get rid of (yeah, what a genius, right?).
Anyways, we were about 10 men at that time and he promised to give all of us a fair share if we manage to find it, so, obviously we started the search.
As you can imagine, that shit usually takes a while to find because you have to literally look through every paper container (about 20) for a small envelope.
Well, the luck was on our side that day, after about 10 minutes a coworker called out that he got it. Awesome. He looked inside and told us later that it was definitely more than 10k (more like 30k).
Everybody got a 100€ bill and it was pretty much the best working day ever.
This man just threw about 30k in the trash and found it like 2 hours later. Should've went to the casino that day.
38. Heir-lewd-ms
Ooh I've had a few. One was a framed portrait of an elderly woman giving everyone the finger, another one was a little plastic monk who got a woody when you pressed his head down, and the third was a foam ballsack... just the ballsack. I can post pics later if anyone's interested.
37. Now Make Them Answer For Messing Up Star Wars
The cleaning company I work for regularly gets rid of unwanted stuff from an Electronics Arts office. We could keep the items they didn't use anymore. Some of the fun things we got were: a classic guitar hero set, wii fit + balance board, sim city mouse pads (still using those), some kind of singstar microphones (use the now for talking online with friends), old sims disks with all the commercials they have ever released (some weird stuff was on there), battlefield bad company key chains, old games like need for speed and rogue galaxy for ps2 and lots of minor stuff. This happens annually so i hope they got some fun stuff this year.
36. Food And Wine Up The Wazoo
At my sister's alma mater, she said the rich girls threw out a lot of good stuff when the dorms had to be cleaned out for the summer. She got clothes, shoes and purses.
I lived in Israel as an English teacher several years ago and since thrift stores aren't really a thing there, perfectly good clothes would be thrown out. I got so many bags of clothes.
Once they were washed, they were perfectly fine. (Got hand-me-downs from my teacher, the teacher of two people in my cohort and a few friends in my cohort as well.) Never had to buy clothes (minus a pair of boots and my Purim costume) during my 10 months in Israel! Before Passover, people toss anything that isn't kosher for Passover. I found more clothes and three unopened bottles of wine!
35. Comin' Down The Mountain On My New Ride
I usually find brand new stuff still in the plastic. Haven't really found anything illegal though.
My brother in law works for a recycling place and he finds all kinds of cool sh*t. One day he came home with 3 brand new dc snowboards. He said whatever company wanted to shred the last year's model that didn't sell so he took it home.
34. High School-Does It Really End?
I was a janitor for my high school in the summer months and one of the first jobs of the summer was locker clean out. I was given the master key for all the lockers and had to go in one by one to clean them out. I found so many bottles of ADHD meds (adderal, ritalin, vyvanse), relatively brand new shoes, nice north face fleeces among other random sh*t.
33. Softe™
I'm a major thrift store scavenger. I found a tiny hole-in-the-wall junk shop in a town just outside a big Tennessee city, near Amish country. Most of the stuff was old vending machine crap, and stacks of old magazines etc.
I saw a big plastic bag full of (what looked like) old, torn towels that had "donate" written on it and scratched out, and "whole bag $10" rewritten on the bag. I started peeking through it. Under the torn towels were incredibly beautiful hand-embroidered bed linens and pillowcases, some with crocheted or hand-tatted lace trim.
Most were incredibly soft linen, or beautiful cotton. I'm a crafter so I immediately saw the value. My guess is that someone's mother/grandmother passed away and they threw her whole linen cabinet into a bag without looking closely. I got up really quickly so the store clerk wouldn't see how excited I was and guess that the bag had more than towels in it. I paid the $10 and ran to my car to unpack.
In that bag were 8 pairs of pillowcases (all different, all flawlessly embroidered ), 6 embroidered woven dish towels , a 1950s style apron, and many small items like handkerchiefs..and 2 torn towels. Down the road in the antiques shopping row, I saw a pair of nearly identical pillowcases going for $50 a pair.
A bunch of the stuff is currently on my bed. Others were sold on eBay for 4 times what I paid for the whole bag.
32. Rich People Can Afford Anything
Friend's uncle owns some apartment buildings. Guy from China was living in one of the units and ended up needing to leave the country for Visa issues. Eventually got in touch with the guy somehow (email likely) to ask what was going on, why no rent paid, etc.
Guy explains and says that he can't give money for rent, and to just sell off anything in the apartment to make up for it. Guy had left computers, tvs, a f*cking mercedes, etc. Cleared way more than the $1600 for two months rent, plus kept the security deposit.
31. A Nice Weekly Tip
I worked on the back of a trash truck for one summer when I was younger. It was my girlfriend's dad's company so I rode with him pretty much the entire time. We never found anything truly odd but one of my best memories was when we used to go around to pick up trash at these multi-million and billion dollar homes.
There was this one house that we picked up trash at that always had four, five, six huge cans full of bottles and trash from their weekly parties.
The rule was, only two large cans were to be picked up. Anything extra would cost the customer more. Well, in order to avoid having to pay the company extra, every week there would be this old guy standing at the back gate with a $100 bill. He'd hand us the bill in exchange for us not telling the owner about the extra pick-up.
The owner, the guy who he handed the money to, always promised not to tell anyone about it. We always had a good lunch on those days.
30. A Past Blast With A Twist
My dad was a garbage man. My brother and never paid for a bike as kids - he'd find bikes in various states of disrepair and bring them back home to fix them up from their usable parts.
Also, radios. My dad would find some incredible old radios - tons of 40s/50s era tube radio receivers, which we would fix up together.
As far as illegal, I remember him telling me that he found a big ziploc bag full of mary jane one time.
29. Yeah Don't Mess With 1970s NYC
Not me, but my Dad was. 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.
I wrote this before, but here it goes. The creepiest thing was in the early 1970's, Dad and the other 2 guys (at the time they were 3 to a truck, one drove, the others loaded the trash), were in East New York, an area of Brooklyn that is really sh*tty (and still is today).
They come across a very large human foot that was black (as in it came from someone who was black). Not knowing what to do, they put it in a paper bag and drove to the nearest police precinct. They walk up to the desk Sgt and place the bag in front of him. He asks what is this about?
He gestures to look inside. Desk Sgt does. closes bag up, looks at Dad and his partners, and tells them "Cycle it" (By cycle, he meant just run it through the truck with the other trash).
He tells Dad that the foot was likely removed as a warning to someone, that they (the police in that precinct) had seen it before. It was likely drug related. Even if they did find the owner, he wouldn't talk, and the foot couldn't be attached back. By moving the foot, they pretty much ruined a crime scene.
They cycled the foot.
This was the 1970's - NYC was in a downward spiral at the time.
28. For The Craft
Very wealthy neighborhood. I tossed 4-5 bags into the hopper, the fifth one ripped... sweet sweet mary jane. Although it was just trimmings. I laughed and kept going.
The most valuable would have to be an assorted allotment of unused winsor and newton oil paints. nothing too spectacular. But as an artist it was valuable to me.
27. What Is It With The 1970s
As a kid, I can chime in what rich people threw away, even in the 1970s. None of this would make that much sense anymore, but the number one thing that I found that was surprising were clock radios. They were perfectly functioning clock radios, they just weren't the new LCD models. They were the flip kind, or they would have a gear that would slowly turn and show the time. Are used to clean them up, and then sell them to other neighborhood kids for like five bucks. My mother caught wind of this, and put an end to it because she didn't like the thought of her son digging through someone else's trash.
Decades later, I went dumpster diving with some friends once in a while to get computer equipment from the back of failed business operations. It's how I built my first few computers. I remember looking at one of the contents of the hard drive, and wondering if people knew that I could read all of their medical records or private email. :/
I am told that it's better handled now. Almost every company I've worked for in the last 20 years has some sort of technology recycling service, but I always wonder if they're just paying someone else to throw it in the dumpster for them.
26. This Was An Episode Of 'My Super Sweet 16,' Probably
My uncle's friend picked up trash in Grosse Pointe in the 80's. There was a rich client who would often meet him by the curb just to talk every day. One day, he up and asks, "Hey, you know anything about cars?" Uncle's friend happened to be working the trash job to save up to open his own car shop, so he replied, "Sure do!"
The guy then asked him what he thought about the Ford Escort, and uncle's buddy replied that he thought it was cheap, but reliable. The rich guy hands him the keys, title, and tells him to pick it up after his route, he had bought it brand new for his daughter, but she hated it, and he was going to get her a different car. The odometer had less than 500 miles on it.
25. Sounds Like Abusive Parents But Ok
I enjoy dumpster diving from time to time even though I make enough money to live comfortably - I grew up in the poor parts of San Diego and would dumpster dive as a kid with my friends for fun and the habit never really wore off.
Back when I was a preteen/teen there was a fairly well off family in our apartment complex who had 4 kids and every month or two, their parents would get PISSED OFF at one of their kids and throw out ALL of their toys. This happened like clockwork every 2-3 months with one kid one month, another kid another month and sometimes 2or 3 kids in one sitting. My friend and I would dumpster dive and pull out EASILY $500 worth of toys each - sometimes brand new stuff with price stickers still attached.
One time, they threw out their kids Harry Potter collection stuff out. Got a few of the books, some limited edition golden Harry Potter bookmarks, unused journals and this brand new and unopened. I still have it over 15 yrs later.
More recently though I've found a F*CKTON of crafting supplies - mainly really expensive beads and beading materials to make necklaces/bracelets. I'm talking like 30 lbs of beads and beading materials in one big box - split it up into parts and sold them for $100 on ebay each.
Also found a set of really nice fireplace pokers with the holder, a few used brand name handbags, a bag full of Iron Maiden gear including shirts, CDs, random cutouts and printouts of Iron Maiden's Eddie and a huge cloth iron maiden flag all from the same dumpster (on different occasions).
Also, when I go out of town to big cities (or when I go back to visit my family in San Diego) I like to go dumpster diving at makeup stores since they tend to throw out perfectly near new condition displays ALL THE TIME. Easily have gotten over $5k worth of makeup products over the years by diving in their dumpsters.
24. A Cute Month's Rent
Not a garbage man - but at work there was this big cleaning spree in our storage room (IT place)
Rummaging through it because I was bored and noticed there were a LOT of brand new sealed in retail box Lexmark color ink cartridges. I don't have an inkjet but this was going to get thrown on a pallet and tossed.
I scored probably 25 or 30 brand new boxes (tricolor packs) and sold them all online for like $600 pure net profit (after fees) Turns out people are willing to buy those things when your price is 20% less than everyone else online.
23. Collections
My dad has been 'on the bins' (working for the council doing refuse, blocked drains, street cleaning etc) for about 30-odd years.
He brought a load of books home once, all hard cover Terry Pratchett's, that someone had just tossed in to a bin in a shopping centre.
He used to do tip runs, collecting stuff that had been dumped illegally and taking it to a tip (landfill?) and he used to come back with all sorts of sh!t. Mum would just bin it all again as soon as he was at work. "Look at this!" he'd say, dragging something utterly horrid in to the house "Can you believe someone would throw this away?!" Yes dad. We can believe.
Bonus points - his mates that worked our route would let me press the button on the trash compactor! 8 year old me f*cking LOVED bin day.
22. Let's Build An Entire House From This
Dumpster diver: Fender Telecaster, rusted strings but unplayed; Sony short wave radio; washing machine & dryer; silver ashtray, spoon, and chopsticks, a set; unopened whiskey and brandy bottles; a sword; a set of old handmade carbon steel kitchen knives with ebony handles; several printers; 3 Sony Trinitron monitors; books, lots of books; several 30-40 year old passports; a Raleigh 753 tubing road race bike; a top-of-the-line DeLonghi espresso machine. More stuff I can't recall.
21. Got That Moneyyyyyyyy
Not a trash story exactly, but....a couch was donated to a charity. It went onto the sale floor at a thrift shop and sat there for 2 weeks. Since it reached the time limit for sale they were throwing it into the dumpster. A last second inspection found $40,000 hidden inside.
20. Hang Onto The Rich Kids
I grew up near a very wealthy prep school, and at the end of every year I would dumpster dive for all kinds of things- electronics (mp3s, graphing calculators, etc...), brand new camping gear from the one overnight trip they do, desks/desk chairs, money, you name it. I'd sell some on craigs, keep some, and donate what I didn't need. It's hard to imagine what rich kids throw out.
19. Heads Will Roll
A normal day at the landfill was interrupted by a scream of terror from the dozer driver who came running full tilt and white as a sheet up to my me. He just kept saying heads, heads, heads, over and over again. They went back to his dozer and found a garbage bag torn open with ten bloody heads spilling out of it. Somebody had thrown away ten mannequin heads that had been used in a local haunted house.
18. Identity Theft
When former Football player Ricky Williams briefly retired to become a spiritual guru in the hills he moved into a place that was on my recycling route. I noticed a box he tossed once and grabbed it to see if there was any memorabilia or football items related in it. It looked important. What was in it was team doctors papers, contracts and just about all the personal information that one would need to actually become Ricky Williams.
I felt weird that this was out there, so I took it home and burned every piece of it in the fireplace. Felt guilty even looking at it as I tossed it.
17. Breaking The Code
My good friend who used to work at a recycling plant found an Enigma machine. That's an encryption device the nazis used. It was worth like 10,000 dollars.
16. CLASSIFIED!
I lived in Stuttgart, Germany back in the early 90's. They had something called Sperrmll day (bulk refuse), where people would put out their bulky items for collection. But a lot of useful and even brand new stuff would go out so it was common practice for a lot of people to drive around -particularly in the rich neighborhoods- to see if something good was available. I had a lot of furniture, skis, bicycles, etc, that I had gotten this way.
On this particular one I found a wooden roll top desk that only needed some sanding and refinishing. When I got it home and started taking it apart, one of the locked drawers had a binder with US department of defense schematics for what looked like a howitzer cannon. The whole thing had lots of RESTRICTED ACCESS stamped all over it.
I called the US embassy (this was at night) and left a voice mail in their emergency contact line. They called me within an hour and 2 MPs and 2 crew cuts in suits showed up at my house in less than 1/2 hour after that! After a lot of questions, thorough examination and some arguing about who would keep the desk (they took a lot of pictures of it and said they might send someone out later to collect it, but never did) they asked me to keep the incident to myself and left.
I never heard anything else about that event. My guess is that the documents were in the possession of a military worker living in the city and someone in his/her household wasn't careful about throwing stuff away. The fact that people who looked like CIA showed up in my house so fast is the exciting part.
15. Wrong Kind Of Litter
A box of live rabbits. I don't know how this managed to happen but a lady had mistakenly put the said box in her bin. She was hysterical, came to the site and we found the box with all the rabbits still perfectly healthy.
14. There Goes The Neighborhood
I work in the office a company that collects garbage. I got a call from a customer and she stated that every time they bring their bin back up from the street, something on it burns their skin. I called the operations manager who went out to check it out with the environmental officer. Turns out the next door neighbour was disposing of toxic chemicals in his bin and there was some transfer.
13. Got Off On The Wrong Foot
Bags and bags and bags of doll heads with no eyes.
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12. Urning A Living
You'd be shocked how people throw out their cremated family members.
11. Burying The Bad Memories
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 and 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 grinning at the camera. They were doing their training I think in some leafy camp in England. Then it switched to an awful looking 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 stuff.
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.
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10. We're Guessing She Said No
A friend whose dad was a garbageman 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.
9. This Guy's A Straight Shooter
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.
8. A Regular Dragon's Hoard
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 adult films.
An entire box of new-in-wrapper embossed steel Rolling Rock Beer signs. Sold them on Ebay for over $300.
7. Roach Motel
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.
6. Like A Garbage-Collecting Unicorn
I once found a big black adult toy 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.
5. Gives Disposable Income A Whole New Meaning
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.
4. Dead Drop
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.
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3. Nobody Thought This Was A Bad Idea?
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.
2. What Happens In Vegas Stays In Vegas, Including Your Money
My uncle in Vegas was a trash man. After work he would walk through the landfill and find casino chips, jewelry, other valuables and money - enough to buy a very nice home on his modest wages after only a couple years. Rich, drunk and/or stupid means a lot of disposed, as opposed to disposable, wealth
1. A Dis-Arming Find
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.
When it comes to TV and movies, acting is everything. A good actor can make a bad TV show good, while a bad actor can do the opposite.
While the main character is the person viewers focus on for the most part, the villain may be the most important character.
Without the villain, our main character wouldn't be interesting.
The actor or actress who plays the villain needs to be top-notch. A great example of this is Imelda Staunton, who played Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1.
Umbridge was a truly despicable character, made more evil by the fact that she posed as someone working for the greater good and held a position of authority over all the heroic characters. Staunton did a great job portraying her exactly as the books described, and made viewers hate her just as much as we hated her in the books.
As the main villain in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a poor performance would've destroyed the movie. Instead, this is often the movie fans like the best.
Redditors know the importance of a good villainous performance and are eager to share their opinions on the best in TV and movie history.
It all started when Redditor Helloimafanoffiction asked:
"What’s the greatest villain performance in a movie/TV show?"
Worst Teacher Ever?
"J.K. Simmons is up there for his role in Whiplash. Hated his guts there."
– Xporttek
"I just watched that movie for the first time a couple days ago, I too hated him! Who throws a chair at a student??? Who embarrasses a student in front of a whole audience just for revenge and then have the audacity to say "I will gouge your f*cking eyes out"???? Hated him."
– Lejarwomontequadea
"Thank you for getting that he was a villain. Too many of my friends see his speech at the end about finding/creating a good musician as profound enough to justify everything he did throughout the movie. And they see the “reconciliation” at the end as a sign that he was a good teacher after all. Maybe I’m off base, but that wasn’t what I saw at all. I saw a power hungry, obsessed, abusive adult take advantage of a passionate boy."
– John__Wick
Origin Stories Matter
"Charles Dance as Tywin Lannister."
"His introduction where he lectures Jaime while skinning a deer is perfection."
– 501stBigMike
"Yes. His acting was far more intricate and nuanced than any other villian on the show. He seemed like a real villian, not just a character being played. Too often hollywood goes overboard on the evilness of their characters and makes them evil for the sake of being evil. Give me backstory. Tell me how they become who they are."
– NeighborhoodCold6540
Super Scary
"Homelander in The Boys. I forgot the actor's name but the performance is actually kind of terrifying"
– Carnaraa
"Antony Starr"
– Precumbrian
"Yeahhhhhh he is so very very very scary. Absolutely amazing performance."
– Haliwe
"Every scene he's in I'm always worried that whoever he is interacting with won't survive the scene, especially if they're not a main character."
– HappyChaosOfTheNorth
"Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds"
"That opening scene is just....... 👌"
– hackyslashy
"Tarantino grew so frustrated at casting that role, he was five days away from calling off the movie when Waltz auditioned."
""I told my producers I might have written a part that was un-playable,” Tarantino said. “I said, I don’t want to make this movie if I can’t find the perfect Landa, I’d rather just publish the script than make a movie where this character would be less than he was on the page. When Christoph came in and read the next day, he gave me my movie back.""
– Exact_Roll_4048
The Curl Of The Lip
"Any and every villain Alan Rickman played, the man was a pure genius"
– Psyco_diver
"Rickman's villain roles are always captivating. Hans Gruber and the Sheriff of Nottingham being the two more notorious examples."
– Hydra_Master
"Sheriff of Nottingham is my pick. Maybe not as high as others in the evil stakes but nobody curls their lip in disdain like Rickman."
– Swimmingbackwardsish
Nightmares
"Child catcher from chitty chitty bang bang .. this one performance might have stopped many rl kidnappings."
– nineties_nostalgia
"Was the first film character that truly terrified me"
– 2020_really_sucks_
"Yeah nightmare fuel for sure, he was a ballet dancer in real life."
– nineties_nostalgia
Is There A Right Answer?
"Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh."
– f*ckyourlandlord
"To this day, I still wonder what the right answer to "Do you see me?" is."
– PaulsRedditUsername
So Very Hateable
"Commodus in Gladiator"
– SimonApexPlayer
"One of the first movie characters I actually hated. And that one a**hole from The Green Mile."
– heylittledog
Why So Serious?
"The Joker by Heath Ledger"
– Adalbjorg_Hiraeth
"I think it’s too easy of an answer so people are going with other stuff. He is the GOAT for that performance."
– CappinPeanut
"Absolutely this one. Crazy, maniacal, insane, unhinged - he’s just so damn convincing. 100% my favorite Batman film."
– mrshfter
Rage Inducing
"David Tennant in Jessica Jones."
– jennyrob669
"I absolutely adore David Tennant, in a Doctor Who—obsessed kind of way. And Kilgrave terrifies me to my core. It was really difficult to reconcile. He did such a good job being positively chilling."
– Lionswithwands
"The man has range."
– Tudpool
"Man he felt straight up menacing and nothing redeemable about him."
– Konebred
"I’ve never wanted to step into the screen and kill the bad guy more than this character."
– Primary_Difficulty19
Brilliantly Done
"Really enjoyed Andrew Scott’s portrayal as Moriarty in Sherlock."
– GlennSWFC
"Of course people are going to die, because that's what people DO!!!!"
"He was such an enjoyable unhinged maniac in that show."
– Hydra_Master
The Ultimate Anti-Hero
"Walter White"
"Probably the most complex and realistic evil character both in writing and performance. So complex that you honestly might not call him a villain at all. He's something like a good person who does evil things with good intentions and evil reasons. And Bryan Cranston's portrayal of him is awesome."
– PaulsRedditUsername
Animated Villain
"Azula in Avatar the Last Airbender"
– nicoledtn
"The scene where she and Zuko fight is so amazing. You see her unhinge and slowly lose her sh*t up to that scene. She finally goes crazy and it’s brilliant."
– vaulter2000
"Grey Griffin was the best voice actor for the role. Intimidating but cool."
– Sleepy_H34D
Azula was always my favorite villain!
Who would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments below.
Sometimes the most outlandish ideas sound totally plausible.
In this day and age when 'Saturday Night Live' and 'The Onion' sound like credible news sources, anything is possible.
It feels like a lot of humans will believe literally anything.
Redditor Jeffery_DahmerTV wanted to discuss the ideas that sound too crazy that they have to be true, so they asked:
"What is the most believable conspiracy Theory?"
In this day and age of alternative facts, it all seems like lies and truth.
Enlighten me.
Infection
"That computer viruses are made by antivirus companies to test their antivirus software."
astarisaslave
"Parents bought a new computer recently, the McAfee stuff was in there pretty deep to remove. The staff bogged it down, way faster afterward."
lt12765
War
"We are being goaded into waging culture wars that don't matter to keep us from waging class wars."
virgilreality
"Is this a conspiracy theory though? It would be if you assume it was engineered from the start, but this would also make it very unbelievable. But that existing conflicts had been fueled and taken advantage of by people in the position to for millennia is well evident I'd say."
Leseleff
Double Down
"Mattress Firm is a front for laundering money. There is no other reason for there to be so many. No one is ever even in there."
Free_Bingo
"Double down on this one! I have a Mattress Firm next to my job and I have never seen anyone in there ever. It’s been six years!"
cbcmama781
"I’m not convinced of this. Our local Mattress Firm is clearly baking $1k+ into their margins and then aggressively selling credit-based financing. Selling two or three a month probably covers everything."
Agloe_Dreams
Weather Issues
"Those climate protestors that glue themselves to the road are hired by oil giants to make climate activists look stupid."
milanvlaman
"I feel this way about a lot of 'extremist' groups on both sides, that there are plants from the other side doing really stupid stuff just to discredit the idea."
Herr_Poopypants
The climate is changing. We have to come together. How is that a conspiracy?
That's All
"That the fashion industry purposefully doesn’t put pockets in women’s clothing so they have to carry purses."
diceunodixon
Financial Clean Up
"That the only reason that the US government doesn’t do anything with student debt loans is because then people would stop signing up for the army."
Brotastic29
"That and healthcare.
"When you join up you get healthcare fully covered for you and your family, and you can get a full college education.
If the government started providing either of those for civilians, no one would need to join the military anymore."
redF5veStandingBy
"I think so too. I know and agree with what that dude was saying but when I see or hear people use 'Army' as a way to generalize the military, it usually means that what they said is something they’re just repeating what they heard."
chefboiortiz
The Commission
"There's definitely more to JFK's assassination than the Warren commission made it out to be. Whether or not LHO was the sole killer, I find it fishy that the CIA was so desperate to hide information from the public."
Bitter-Record-3831
"There is a very well-done documentary that concludes it was an accidental discharge from a Secret Service agent in one of the cars ahead of him."
Babstana
"CIA probably considered the assassination a declaration of war against Russia. They’re probably covering up that they were about to start WW3 over it."
tangcameo
Dairy Pounds
"The Great cheese conspiracy. Each year the US government buys more and more milk to make more and more cheese. The US government is sitting on something like 2 billion pounds of cheese. Just to artificially inflate milk prices."
worfhill
"Not even a conspiracy, just an example of the government controlling the economy in favor of dairy farmers."
Glass_Pies
"I watched a documentary about this. It's actually true."
PreferredSex_Yes
They're Listening
"That the CIA posts questions like this on Reddit to measure their past and current work, brainstorm for future projects."
ZRX1200R
Ominous
"I have a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories. I believe the governments and 'leaders' of the world are actually rather incompetent, so much so, that they require the illusion of them being an ominous all-powerful all-seeing entity in order to remain in power."
"And to accomplish this they allow conspiracy theories like the Illuminati and etc to spread around to add a bit of urban myth to how 'powerful' they are."
"It's probably all a bunch of garbage Europe can barely communicate within itself you expect there to be some secret global order??? Oh, stop it haha."
SparkNoJoyThrw01
Sifting through what could and could not be true, could take forever.
Life is full of mystery.
When we were in our early twenties, most of us felt like we were officially adults, untouchable, and essentially unstoppable.
But looking back, most of us made some pretty cringy decisions when we were that age.
Redditor ALLEYWAYwithanS asked:
"What's the dumbest thing you've done in your twenties?"
Free Money
"Decided against contributing to my company's matching 401k. It cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars."
- orange_cuse
"This can't be stressed enough. If your company is matching 401k contributions, the single best thing you can do is contribute up to their match. That is an instant 100% return on your investment."
"Social Security benefits will not be enough for you to retire comfortably, and when you're over 50 it gets real tough to find work that pays more than minimum wage. Make saving a priority now. The sooner the better, because it is a cruel world for unprepared retirees."
- gishnon
Much-Needed Routines
"Everyone wants to hear about dumb stuff like driving eight hours to get with someone you liked only for it to end up being a booty call."
"However, I personally think it was my general lack of effort to build any good habits like exercise. Your body likes routines, and my routine of gaming for 15 hours a day was not one I should have cultivated."
- stormscape10x
"This is such an important one! I'm 25 and have wasted the last eight years of my life being a typical Asian young adult, focusing solely on education and career instead of doing more to take care of my fitness and mental well-being."
"My culture brainwashed me into thinking of it as a good thing to sit at my desk and study for six hours straight instead of building a good habit of eating a balanced meal and exercising every day. I'm paying for that mistake now."
- ListernerSaraf
Dental Hygiene
"Not looking after my teeth."
- pgraczer
"Second best time is now! Start taking care of them and get into the dentist, a dental school even for free cleaning and check-ups."
- Weazy-N420
"I'm still playing catchup. I let my teeth go in college and didn't get them looked at until after I finished AIT in 2020. I had them in a good spot for a while, deployment in 2022 f**ked them up again though. It's so godd**n hard to fix your teeth once they're on the downward slide."
- MonsieurLinc
"I have weak teeth, too. That's not a reason to give up, it's just a reason to absolutely lock down your routine. You'll save yourself a lot of time, money, and pain!"
"Here's what I do:"
"I only eat two times per day (intermittent fasting is not for everyone but it's great for limiting acid exposure on your teeth). And don't drink anything sugary. If you have to, do it while you're eating and not between meals."
"Swish with water and/or mouthwash immediately after meals/drinks."
"Wait 30 minutes before brushing. Your enamel is softest directly after eating so brushing too soon can be harmful."
"Get really good toothpaste with fluoride or hydroxyapatite for remineralization. Your dentist can give you a prescription high-fluoride toothpaste."
"Do your brushing routine in this order: floss, then mouthwash, then brush. Use a soft-bristled toothbrush and don't scrub too hard. Don't rinse after brushing so the fluoride can stay on your teeth and do its work."
"Get a tongue scraper and do that once in a while too."
"If you're away from home (work, friend's house, driving, etc) and don't have a toothbrush, xylitol gum is great for a quick cleaning and breath freshening. Xylitol helps kill plaque-causing bacteria because they think it's sugar."
"Might seem like a lot but it's worth it! My mouth always feels clean and I get compliments from hygienists."
- pmvegetables
Deep Burnout
"I worked way too hard and burnt out. Sacrificed family time. Sacrificed health. Need to pace yourself at the age of 20-30."
- big-bad-bird
"This is me right now. 29 and totally burned out. I refused to pace myself even with my chronic illness, I refused to address my traumas because 'I am a functional member of society so why would I seek a therapist,' and I refused to say no to things because I was afraid people would dislike me."
"Last year, I slowly started collapsing under all that. Things I repressed wouldn't stay repressed and because of nightmares, I had constant panic attacks when I got home from work and eventually bordered on agoraphobia where I would try and flee the grocery store because 'everyone can see you are feeling unwell and is judging you' and started making excuses to work from home because the office would overwhelm me."
"I really wish I started addressing stuff sooner. I tire so easily now and am constantly anxious about not being productive enough now that I'm at home. Which is super counterproductive when your body is saying, 'Yo, slow down. Please go find a nice hobby and relax.'"
- Melvarkie
Chasing Love
"Begged to be loved."
- SystemNovel7112
"I’m still in my early twenties and I feel like this is what I’ve been doing. The worst part is that other people are good at detecting desperation so they move away from you, which just hurts more."
- Jakov_Salinsky
Roommate Status
"I moved in with a girlfriend before finding out more about her preferences. We had been dating for a year but I didn’t realize how much of a problem she had sharing until we lived together."
"We lived together for five years and never shared a bedroom, had everything split down the middle, including the pantry and fridge. Even when it came to spices, she insisted on me getting my own. She hated it when I would be in the same room as her unless it was on 'her terms.'"
"Whenever I asked to make our relationship more of a shared experience, I was gaslit into believing I was wrong for not allowing boundaries. She moved out a month ago, and I couldn’t believe how quickly my mental health improved simply by not having that toxic influence around anymore."
- Char10
Sobering Up
"Fell into a debilitating drug addiction. I have 26 months sober on the fifth!"
- pumpe88
Motorcycle Insurance
"I took a $12k loan to buy a motorcycle. I didn’t want to pay for comprehensive insurance, and the bike got stolen four months later."
- toyotasquad
Mental Health Assistance
"Not getting help for my depression sooner. Spent the entire first half of my 20s in the darkest place I can imagine, and all I needed to feel better was some meds once a day."
- badgirlkayy
Lackluster Love
"I got into a half-hearted relationship and wasted three years of my life."
- plutorollsvanillaice
Receiving an Education
"Not studying properly."
"At the time, studying for two to seven years seemed like a lifetime, but now at 30, I wish I had done it. Don't have the money or flexibility to do it now."
- MarmateW
Early Alcoholism
"I drank my way through my entire 20s. After 25, it wasn't really fun anymore, but that didn't stop me. I drank for another five years."
"My 20s are a total blur splattered with some fun times here and there. But mostly it was just me running away from things with alcohol."
"Almost 17 years later and not one drop. My 30s and 40s are exceptionally better."
- Blackbeltchicken
#GolfCartLife
"I crashed a golf cart at 29. I was so f**ked up with road rash, both ankles were rolled and f**ked up, and one Achilles was messed up pretty bad."
"It took two years for one ankle to feel normal again. I still have a bunch of scarring. I have never f**ked myself up so badly before. The road rash and treating it all over my body was one of the most painful things I’ve ever dealt with."
"I am so careful in those things now and honestly just everything in general. I'm lucky I didn’t hit my head."
- ochief19
...But How?
"I went to Italy and forgot to eat pizza."
"I still can't believe that happened. I had pasta there, gelato, took some amazing photos, explored a lot, and when I came back, I was like, I missed something?"
"Then I was like, 'F**K! I forgot to eat pizza, IN ITALY!' LOL (laughing out loud)."
- TheStraightishGuy
An Unexpected Life
"I remember when I was that age and desperately wanting the kind of job you work for the same place your whole life. Instead, I was in a dead-end job, working the third shift, going to school, and worrying constantly about what I was going to do with my life. I was lost and without any real direction."
"20-some years later, I still don’t have many traditional accomplishments. I’m a stay-at-home dad, and I was diagnosed with Crohn's at 21/22, so that ended school."
"All the things I thought I’d need to get through life, I don’t have."
"What I DO have is a wide array of experiences. I’ve worked in retail for decades, childcare/teaching/mentoring/etc., had kids for almost as long, worked on a shrimp boat, and tree farms, I’ve seen and been around every state except for Alaska."
" I know a ton of people and I’m generally on good terms with them, I’m healthy enough to exercise every day, I have a loving family, and all our basic needs are met. I’m still directionless but I’m no longer lost."
"Anyone else out there feeing like I did, just do the best you can with what you’ve got. Never stop trying to be better, and if you need to, just point in a direction and go that way."
"If you need a degree but you don’t know what you want, just pick something you think you’ll like. Some jobs that need a college degree mean they need someone with a Bachelor's degree."
- altxatu
When we think of mistakes made in our twenties, we might think of dating mishaps and drinking or partying too much.
But the reality is that the mistakes made in our twenties are far more serious, like creating routines that help us take care of ourselves or completing tasks that will help us reach our dreams.
Fortunately, we're young in our twenties, and we have a lot of time to come back from those mistakes.
It's also never too late to commit to doing better right now.
Time and time again, people spreading lies about others for no reason has demonstrated the lack of humanity in our gossip-obsessed society.
People have nothing better to do other than to bring down others out of spite.
What's even more disappointing is that some of us have at one point played a part in perpetuating these rumors without even knowing it.
And other times, we are the subject of a rumor, and that's never fun.
Curious to hear examples of the situation, Redditor PieNo17 asked:
"What’s the worst rumor you ever heard about yourself?"
Kids can be so cruel.
Introduction To Antisemitism
"I was bullied in elementary school for being Jewish. I very much am not Jewish. Apparently there was a rumor going around school that I was a 'Jew boy.' I was utterly confused and didn’t understand why being Jewish would even be something to be bullied about."
– goobermuslim
The Racist
"Ah, I used to get bullied for being Asian....I am not Asian. Turns out it was a rumor started by a kid who was actually half Asian. I think he just didn't want to be the only Asian kid at school."
– tn00bz
Seeking Pleasure At The Buffet
"When I was in sixth grade our whole grade (~100) was on a field trip out of town. We stopped at an Old Country Buffet to eat. I had to poop while we were there, and another kid in my grade was peeking through the stall at me while I was on the toilet. He then yelled that I was pleasuring myself in the stall. This turned into everyone talking about it outside of the bathroom, and now I was the kid who m*sturbated in an Old Country Buffet."
– slob_johnson
Teacher Killer
"When I was a kid, I was in the (for lack of a better term) special ed program at school due to a muscular condition that affected my fine motor skills, which meant I got bullied mercilessly. Determined to change my rep, I worked ridiculously hard to improve my skills so I no longer needed that program in middle school. Somehow, a rumor got started that I'd been kicked out of that program because I'd tried to kill the teacher, and that became the rumor that defined me until the day I graduated high school."
– jessthefacts97
These Redditors' friends thought they'd seen a ghost.
Wreck Survivor
"I had a car wreck on a country road. Black Cow and calf in the road, and I hit both of them. My mother called into school the next day but pretty much just told them I was in a wreck and nothing else. Word got around that I was dead in a car wreck."
"Showed up at school 2 days later because car wrecks hurt and a couple of buddies actually cried when I showed up saying they thought I was dead."
– DisGruntledDraftsman
Name Mixup
"Once, at work, we came across the obituary of a former coworker. Due to the long hours we were working on this project none of us managed to go to the wake or funeral, but we sent flowers. Months later the dude turned up on another job site, very much alive. Apparently this dude that died was totally unrelated, had the same name and was also an industrial painter… we sent flowers, that must have been confusing for his family."
– trijkdguy
Different Coworker
"Similar story happened to me. Had severe covid at the very beginning of the pandemic. Was out of work for 6 months. Someone with my exact name and in the same town passed away my coworkers thought it was me. Some people didn't even know i was alive until I was back to work for three months"
– ZombieLebowski
The Friendship Test
"That I had died. I woke up one morning to find about 50 messages on my phone and dozens of missed calls (my phone was on silent). It was my ex girlfriend of all people who I spoke with first as she was freaking out because (as it turns out) someone with my name had died. It got lost in translation and next thing you know a lot of my out of state friends thought it was me. It was nice to know they cared so much."
– Yeeaaaarrrgh
Rumors about crushes, love and relationships seem to be a commonality.
Some "Friend"
"My friend introduced me to a girl at his high school and we were into each other. She was having some friends over for a sleepover and took the opportunity to invite me over, cuddle and make out while everyone else was asleep. The next morning we groggily hung out for a bit and made plans to hang out again soon. I’ll never forget how she hugged me and kissed me before I left. I ran into our mutual friend while walking home and I told him where I’d been. I didn’t know that he had a crush on her and he was pissed. By the time I got home, she had blocked and deleted me. I found out later from another friend that our mutual 'friend' had told her that I had an STD and only wanted to use her for sex."
– regnarbensin_
Friendship Destroyer
"Hey, this same thing happened to me! I moved around a lot as a kid and ended up in the same place for 7th to 12th grade. The first few people I met were some kids in the neighborhood, 1 girl and 1 guy. They weren't mutual friends, but I became good friends with both of them and ended up introducing them to each other. The girl and I would stay up late texting on old flip phones and sneak out with each other over the summer. Then, almost out of nowhere, she just stopped talking to me. Turns out the guy developed a crushed and spent literal weeks trying to convince her that all I wanted was sex. Luckily, I was able to find out and defend myself, but unluckily, I found out later that he did that with many, many people. He probably ended up ruining at least 30 friendships with people throughout my time in high school."
– LycheeTrash
A Bad Romance
"i think the only rumor that i ever really heard back in highschool was that i communed with satan. and when a few people asked, i just went with it. i was just like ya, satan and i talked last night, hes doing well. we have dinner plans for the weekend. just stupid stuff like that."
– another-redditor3
We never know how the rumor mill picks some of these out and seemingly distributes them to everyone in our community, no matter how big or small or far away. But we're glad these Redditors were willing to share!