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Thrift Store Employees Share The Saddest Things People Have Ever Donated

Thrift stores abound with killer clothes that only exist in that one place, a strange amount of used electronics, and extremely cheap ways to outfit your entire kitchen with silverware, mugs, pots, and pans.

But the whole time you're there you feel a keen sense that most of the items around you have been neglected in an attic for the last two decades and dusted off very recently.

Usually, that's no big deal. But sometimes things that old and given away are given away for a reason.

u/NormalBlogTM asked, "Charity shop volunteers of Reddit, what's the worst/saddest thing your shop has been donated?"


Discount Haunting

A local woman with young kids died of cancer, so her husband donated all her clothes to the shop. The shop then did the worst thing it could, and dressed all the mannequins in the window in her clothes. Her kids had to walk past the shop displaying their dead Mum's clothes to get to school every day.

u/pickleforpresident

Not the Intended Recipient

A teddy bear with a pre-recorded message telling someone that they love them and hope they get better.

u/Octolingfighter

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When an Object is a Portal 

An elderly man came in one day and donated his and his wife's wedding rings. He told me he had worn her ring on a chain around his neck since she died nearly 20 years earlier. They had no children and he didn't date again. He had finally decided to donate their rings because he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer a few days before. Safe to say, I had to take my lunch break early and have a cry in the staff kitchen.

u/wickedturban

Not a Ton of Resale Value

The thing that stuck out the most to me was a set of Crocheted woman's underwear

u/postedByDan

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Not Joking, An Absolute Tragedy

the shop I used to volunteer in got a dead cat in one of the bags once. They figured it must have climbed into one of the big donation bins for clothes and not been able to get out

u/pikapika350

Someone is Out Here Lying About Medals They Never Earned

I found a set of military medals from the second world war in one of our local charity shops before.

Bought them and spent a considerable amount of time trying to find the owner or their relatives to return them but so far no luck.

u/OperationIntegrityIntegrity

Haste Makes Waste

At one point, my mom asked my dad to drop a garage bag of old clothes off at Goodwill. So he grabbed a bag and off he went. When he got there, he realized that he had actually brought a dead raccoon that she had put in a separate bag for some reason.

u/cb789cb

A True Antique

One day while sorting through donations, she came across a slim leather case, which she described as "very handsome." She thought perhaps it contained valuable jewelry or maybe a collector's knife. Opening it revealed an odd contraption made of rubber tubing and metal valves. Perplexed, she took it to her supervisor, who happened to be a Catholic nun.

Turns out it was a 1930s penis inflation device designed for "marital difficulties and impotency." My friend said they got a hefty price for it on eBay.

u/SuzQP

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Hope They’re Never Needed Again

Walkers for small children, and small wheelchairs

u/EmbarrassedSoup7

No Respect

I donated all my fat clothes including a shirt I loved and had for many years. My clothes went like hot cakes which was bittersweet except for my favorite shirt which nobody appeared to want. Finally a guy took it and was using it as his rag to wipe his hands and nose while he ate. That pulled a few heart strings.

u/Vealophile

Historical Events So Ridiculous They Sound Made Up

A Redditor asked: 'What’s an event in history that is so ridiculous it sounds fake?'

historical reenactors
Sigmund on Unsplash

We've probably all heard some variation of the saying "Truth is stranger than fiction."

Real life isn't just strange, it can also be downright ridiculous.

History is riddled with moments of absurdity.

So ridiculous that people have a hard time believing real life is, well, really real.

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person holding photo of three girls near chainlink fence
Anita Jankovic on Unsplash

Life is all about learning new things, including learning new things about the people in your life. Sometimes, the things you learn are shocking, disgusting, or even scary.

I was the new kid in town when I was in fifth grade and my first friend was this quiet (and cute) boy in my class. He and I remained friends through middle school, and even though we drifted apart in high school, our interactions when we ran into each other in the halls or the cafeteria were really nice.

All throughout school and even beyond, he remained quiet, polite, and reserved. Just a few years ago, I read a news article written about him. He had apparently fatally wounded his father after an argument.

I had to reread the article several times to make sure it was really about my old friend. I think about it a lot, and still can't believe it!

I'm not the only one that has a shocking story like that. A lot of Redditors learned shocking or scary things about people from their childhood, and are ready to share.

It all started when Redditor ValuableHovercraft90 asked:

"What's the scariest thing you have found out about someone from your childhood (old friends, teachers, etc)?"

So Creepy

"That the boy who lived across the street and moved when I was 6 is still obsessed with me and my sister 30+ years later and posts ramblings on Facebook with our names and that he's going to be with us. Pretty terrifying honestly."

– mrscrawfish

The Worst List

"A neighbour died when he was 30. Police searched a trailer he owned and found weapons, bombs and a list of people he wanted to kill. My uncle was on that list."

– Flashy_Somewhere_648

"I'm glad this ended the way it did."

– CreepyCandidate4449

Terrifying

"One of my best friends (and locker partner) from high school was kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq. After a nightmare of 6+ months, all went silent. We buried an empty casket in his memory 10 years later."

– francois_du_nord

"This is horrifying. How incredibly sad for family to never get any closure. Very sad to read this. :("

– fizzycherryseltzer

"About 15 years ago my dad received a very good offer for work in Iraq, as a construction specialist. He was considering going, since at the same time the financial crisis started in Europe, but then one of his friends, a civil engineer, was kidnapped. Never returned back either."

– 19lgkrn70

"Same thing for my dad old coworker told him how great the money was. Dude got sniped working on a radio tower or something. My dad luckily was like, "I got a wife and family that would kill me for doing something so dangerous.""

– tristanjones

End Of The Friendship

"One of my dad's good friends, and my "uncle", just stopped coming around one day. I was told he was always busy with work, away, etc."

"Turns out, he killed 3 people in a drug deal gone bad and got life in prison."

"What's scary, is that we were over at his house for a weekend BBQ with a bunch of people earlier in the day of the night he did it, and it happened at his house."

– pnwking509

School Friends

"Don't know if it was scary, but I grew up with a kid whose birthday was the day before mine so we almost always shared birthdays in elementary school. We were friends, even spent the night at his house growing up. Later on in our teens, he started getting into some really dark stuff. I recognize that now as his being a sociopath, but like most everybody else at the time, figured it was just him going through some kind of emo phase. Over the years, we lost touch but I would occasionally run into him around town and our meetings were cordial, if not friendly."

"Last year, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison for killing a man back in 1993, roughly 3 years after we got out of High School. Apparently he, his sister and another man lured this guy out to the boonies and killed him to steal money he had gotten in an insurance settlement."

"The only reason they were caught is the other guy got religion, felt remorse and went on the local TV station and aired a confession before turning himself in (He got 25 to life)."

– 530_Oldschoolgeek

"A girl I went to school with did the same thing. She was the nicest girl, got good grades & was kind of a dork. Mixed with the wrong people after graduation. She and two others lured an old man into an abandoned building, stabbed him and robbed him. He later died from his wounds."

– HereF0rTheSnacks

The Worst Afternoon

"I had a friend in grade school who was being raised by her single dad. She had a unique name and pretty face. She never talked about her mom, and she was super outgoing, so all us kids just made friends with her quickly. It was weird her dad never brought her to our birthday parties, even though she was always invited, but we didn’t think much of it. A couple times, she was allowed to ride the bus home with me after school, and we played and had fun until her dad came to pick her up. Later in the school year, she invited me to ride the bus to her house, and my mom agreed. I was 10. It was the scariest afternoon of my young life. I cannot articulate the extreme tension in her home. We weren’t allowed to make any noise, and we mostly stayed outside, me desperate for my mom to arrive."

"Her dad screamed at us for opening the door, and I was too nervous to go into the house to use the restroom. I knew she was embarrassed that there were no snacks or comforting interactions, like at my house. I didn’t really tell anyone how uncomfortable the experience was. After that day, I didn’t hang out with her a lot. We were in different classes, drifted apart, and decades later, when my own daughter asked to go to a friend’s house, I thought about that girl."

"As an adult, I figured out her dad probably worked a night shift and tried to sleep during the day…or he was an alcoholic who was really angry. Maybe both? I looked her up on social media, and thanks to her unique name and face, I recognized her immediately. She’s a perfectly well-adjusted woman with a beautiful family. She even had pictures of her kids with her dad and tributes to him as the greatest father and grandpa. Her whole page made me wonder what the hell I experienced that afternoon in the 4th grade?"

– OlderAndTired

School Is Supposed To Be Safe!

"In our school, we had something called "de halte." In English, it means "the halt" literally translated. Basically time out. BIf you had a meltdown in class or you were just a little sh*thead, you were sent there for 15 minutes or so to cool off.

The de hatle teacher got fired and jailed for breaking 4 different wrists of 4 different students by bending them the wrong way..."

– Ok_Win7358

*Skin Crawling*

​"There was this classmate a grade below me but all grades shared the same drama class. She was weird and kind of "off." I tried to befriend her at one point and was rebuffed. It later came out that she was actually an almost 30-year-old woman who would show up in a new area claiming to be a 15-year-old runaway. Kind of freaked me out."

jackfaire

It turns out it was a good thing that the friendship didn't work out!