People Who Enter Other Peoples' Homes For A Living Share The Strangest Thing They've Encountered On The Job

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

What in the world are we hiding in our homes? And why? Every home will eventually need repair and maintenance, so that means strangers who are capable of that will have to visit. And the things that they find... oh my! Now we are all allowed to do what we wish with our lives and private property but that doesn't mean we aren't on the odd side. The cable guys and women are really going through it.

Redditor u/theknights-whosay-Ni wanted to hear from all the workers who have encountered some "interesting" situations when doing their jobs on private property by asking.... People who enter homes for a living (Maintenance, cable contractors, etc), what's the strangest thing you've encountered when entering someone's home?

Had a call to help fix a leak.

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I was working as a handyman apprentice. Had a call to help fix a leak.

This guy liked porn. Enough to have posters in a spiral across his living room of girls with their full portfolio showing in each.

Not classy pin ups, raunchy one hand in type. True_Kharma

No Pets. No Way. 

I was checking the pipes under the sinks in every apartment in a block. I went into one and I thought the entire place was carpeted until i looked closer and realized the entire floor was covered in a layer of hair. It was probably the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. They didn't have any pets either. Tpmbyrne

I can Smell It. 

I've seen plenty of weird artwork or cringe inducing family photos but the strangest was when I worked for a small carpet cleaning company. We got a call from a guy who wanted us to take a look at his basement to see if we could help him with some "stains." I could smell the mold before I even got close to the stairs leading down to the basement.

I walk down there to find out that the stains are actually several fungi that have grown completely through the underpad and carpet. Mold spots were very visible in most of the dry wall too. He apparently though we were going to be able to clean out 3 months of water damage and fungi growth with a steamer. Fungi grown through carpet BrianBoyFranzo

Sculpted Issues. 

I'm a paramedic in an area that is very open sexually. Walked in to a house and found a sculpture of a woman in bondage who looked to be in her 70's doing some kinky stuff to a male sculpture (both are human size). Walk into the back room and see our patient and realize that the sculptures are of her and her husband from a couple of years ago. DesertMedic66

"Tom Cruise room"

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When I was in high school, I did some house work for hire. The oddest house I ever went to was a guy who had around 40 chainsaws stuck into his front yard and a room full of taxidermied cats.

Worked for another guy who had a "Tom Cruise room" full of cardboard cutouts. I caught him dancing with one once while wearing tie die board shorts and Crocs. naai

Hey Lady. 

Why do people hang erotic pictures of themselves on their bedroom walls?

Also opening a draw to find an 80+ year old ladies sexy lingerie collection while she was standing there smiling.

I'm a bedroom furniture fitter. OmniCapp

weirdest house ever.....

As a paramedic we enter weird peoples houses all the time. We went for a guy that brought us out baggies of air that he said was contaminated. He then required we be brought back into a back room with plastic on the floor, a chair with the bottom cushion taken out and a bathtub. He then horrifically explains that this is his crap chair where he hires women to sit on the chair and shit on him.... weirdest house ever. blaporte093

She Gross. 

The maintenance guy in my building told me that he had to go into this really pretty girl's apartment to fix her toilet and when she opened the door, her house was a damn mess and there were poop stained panties all over the floor. Now I can't look at her without thinking about it, and I've never told anyone until now. lilfennec

Get Out.

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I do maintenance for an apartment complex and I've seen my share of vibrators, and porn but the oddest so far Is a tie. Another resident had pet chickens 3 of them (evicted shortly after this was found out) and another had a a crap ton of grapefruits everywhere, to the point opening the door all you smell it citrus, bags upon bags on the couch counter lining the walls. There was hardly room to walk around to do my job as there was just grapefruits everywhere. deathsshadow101

LOLOLOLOL.....

I work on the commercial side of our company and go into multiple businesses a day. Around a month ago I go into a gas station for our regular service. I open up the door to the back storage room and the maintenance guy (who is around 65) was standing in the middle of the room buck naked. I stood there for about 2-3 seconds staring trying to process what I walked into. Right when I realized what was happening I slammed the door. Overall he was pretty embarrassed while repeating I'm so sorry. We had a good laugh about it afterwards. sk8erguysk8er

Wriggling....

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My kitchen once started smelling, and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from until I noticed dark red sludge leaking from underneath the dishwasher. I pulled it out and took it apart to find a brown snake (highly venomous Australian snake) had somehow gotten into the dishwasher, and had been cooked and mangled so it was a pool of intestines, blood and sludge and the last section of the tail had somehow remained intact, so the disembodied tail was still wriggling around. Rik_the_peoples_poet

IN CAGES. FLOOR TO CEILING. 

I used to do estimates for a solar energy company. One house I went to in Pennsylvania was an old 1800's farm house. People who lived there seemed normal other than a bunch of clutter all around. That quickly changed... Asked to see their breaker panel in the basement and was led down a winding skinny stair case to a dirt floor basement with no ventilation (doors, windows) and no less than 100+ rabbits.

IN CAGES. FLOOR TO CEILING. ENTIRE PERIMETER OF THE BASEMENT. Kid you not. Felt like I was breathing through a straw because of the ammonia from the rabbit piss and shit that was covering the floor. Asked if they breed and sell rabbits or something and he answers "kinda." I'm positive that was their main food source for the family and rabbit was on the menu every night of the week. NYR410

Just... why?

I deliver pizza. The creepiest thing I ever saw was a corridor in a house lined with pictures/painting of crying children. Just... why?

Another customer had a almost naked life sized world of Warcraft character right behind the door. I jumped the first few times I went to his place. srikos

8x8....

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I was moving ceiling tiles in order to run a new line, and a sex swing fell out. It was bolted into the 8x8 main support.

Needless to say the line I was running took a slight detour. Dontfeedjay

Every day at 3pm.....

Cleaning crew.

We arrive at the house, the owners are gone. We get to cleaning.

We notice they have a lot of seagull memorabilia around the house.

We are then told that the owners have a pet seagull.

Every day at 3pm, they come home and feed a single seagull a hot dog they cook just for it.

And apparently they've been doing this for years. So sure enough, we looked for the seagull but couldn't find one.

3 PM comes around and the owners come home. Right as we are leaving, one lone seagull swoops down, perched on their porch, and they started cooking it's hot dog.

That was interesting to say the least. emf3rd31495

From Canada....

I used to do hvac and one time i went to go fix a guys furnace and he was pretty wasted. He ended up being a interesting guy. He was a pilot and then they let him go for "no reason." was in the army. Very smart but paranoid guy. Always thought we were going to get bombed (i'm from canada).

Anyways when I went downstairs he had a ton of throwing knives and tons of thick wood with holes right through it. He ended up giving me some tips and wrote like 5 pages about how to throw knives and gave it to me and a few free knives. I wish i kept them. Reddit

The "Unfinished..."

Not me, but a family friend is a realtor. She usually shows upscale homes to upper class families on the east coast.

She was showing a couple a house, and the husband asked if there was a basement. This wasn't part of the planned tour because the owners listed it as "unfinished."

Our friend told them that the house did indeed have a basement and agreed to show it with the warning that it was unfinished.

Upon getting to the basement she was mortified. It turns out that the current owners shot BDSM porn in the basement so it was outfitted with a whipping station, cages, and toys, the whole 9 yards.

The couple nodded and politely asked to return to the tour to see the rest of the house. The friend now requests to inspect every inch of every house before showing it to potential buyers. maarsargo

Oh California.....

I was a cable installer.

I worked all over Southern California.

I had people answer the door with guns, answer the door butt naked, even answer it with someone tied up in the living room (sexually).

One house had a pile of cocaine they were bagging (like double the Scarface pile size). Minters223

Any odd behaviors or schedule?

Cannot confirm the accuracy of this story. My brother in law interned with a law enforcement agency, got close with his supervisors. One of the supervisors told him a story about a time he was a patrol officer in Georgia. They were doing some investigation into a crime (something not super major, like auto theft or something). They knock on this guys door to ask him a couple questions. A young woman answers and says the man isn't home, and that she rents out a room from him. They ask her a few questions, what's this guy like?

Any odd behaviors or schedule? She says, yeah, I'm actually trying to move out of this place, this guy is super weird. She cracks the door open so the officers can see inside. In the living room there is a crockpot full of dildos. She tells them there is a similar crockpot in every room of the house. evgvndr

the lion sleeps tonight....

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I went into a house one time where we were installing security bars in the basement in Detroit. The bars basically blocked off a corner of the basement like a cage. Went into the basement and there was a damn lion chained up down there. Turns out the guy was a drug dealer and used the lion for protection. My boss thought it would be funny to not tell us about it beforehand. WellSum

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