Not the smartest litterbug

[Ree]

A customer decided to clean out his car today, and just dump it all into a shopping cart in the corral outside.

Funny thing, he didn't check out what he was throwing away, and there was a tax assessment letter with his home address and social Insurance Number on it.

Smart move!!!

There was also a raggedy torn briefcase with papers from the school where he obviously teaches.

After the first few minutes of laughing at the stupidity, though, now I wonder if he really was that stupid, or if, perhaps, his car got stolen and someone was cleanig it out.

The manager joked that we should call him and tell him we're just checking on his safety, since we were worried his car might have been hijacked and he was lying in a ditch somewhere, since we found a bunch of garbage with his personal stuff in it.

[solemnwarning]

Like anyone would EVER read somthing you throw out, it's rubbish

[blas]

Here's a funny story, you'll all think my dad is the coolest after this.

I've probably told it before, but...

My parents were driving home from a small town back in 81. On the highway, some stupid jackass threw out a whole bag of garbage onto the highway. With Illinois license plates.

My dad has a bad habbit of picking shit up off the side of the road.

He took the bag home. When they got home, my dad opened it and looked for receipts or something to identify the litterbug.

He found what he was looking for. He spent the $5 or whatever it was at the time to UPS that entire bag of garbage BACK to that guy in Illinois with a note attached saying "From your friends in Wisconsin, you left this on the side of the road!"

[aurelemsrealm]

I'd have reported them to the Illinois State Police for littering instead since it was a whole bag of garbage. Then, I might have sent them a letter asking them how they liked paying the fine.

[Aldous]

I would have called the person to make sure that everything was okay, and his private information was safe. Call him by his full name, drop personal information, and scare the crap out of him. Make him promise never to litter again.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

We were on a NatureScene shoot in (I think) Ohio, at an Edge-of-Appalachia nature preserve and we found where someone had entered this beautiful preserve, driven unpaved, harrowing switchbacks up the side of a mountain, and dumped out a couple bags of household garbage that were spilling open and revealing all sorts of personal info about their idiotic owner.

We called the rangers, who told us to leave it where it lay, and they showed up pretty quickly and got the guy's info.

Busted by Rudy Manke. If I got busted for littering by a famous naturalist, I'd be forever stricken with shame.

SIDENOTE: Rudy also caught a guy vandalizing Peach Tree Rock. Stepped out of the bushes and stopped the guy damaging the site. That's akin to Smokey the Bear stepping out of the woods and chastising you for tossing a butt on the ground. The guy has the best timing I've ever seen.

[protege]

Funny thing, he didn't check out what he was throwing away, and there was a tax assessment letter with his home address and social Insurance Number on it.

Smart move!!!

I would have taken it one step further. Many local areas have a $300 littering fine, and being the I am, I'd have turned him in

[South Texan]

I lived in an apartment complex once that had large, fenced patios for the downstairs apartments. (That was about the only “cool” thing the complex had going for it.) Every Friday, two large, smelly bags of garbage would be thrown over my patio wall. My apartment was the last one before the parking lot and the dumpster was across that lot.

The third time it happened, I opened the bag and found several overdue bill notices and bounced check statements from a bank. Lots of other personal stuff was in the bags as well including a pay stub from a nearby pizza place. I carried the bags over to the apartment from which they came and dropped them (still opened with the personal information displayed) in front of the door. I then pinned to the door one of the bills and a hand-drawn map of where the dumpsters were located along with a statement that other apartment patios were not dumpsters.

It never happened again.

[HawaiianShirts]

The only litterers I get are in the store where I work. They drop their trash wherever they feel like it. I mostly find empty drink containers. Twice I've found a pile of sunflower seed shells left on a mid-level shelf behind product. And once I found a crumpled up Burger King bag on a shelf right next to our department's trash can, as if an extra two feet was just too much. But I don't suppose that's really littering as it is technically private property, and we can't (or just don't) fine the customers for it.

I lived in an apartment in Spokane that had the perfect patio/balcony thing. It was a third-floor apartment. The patios were separated from the others by walls that went all the way from the ground to the roof. And our view was of a cluster of trees to the left and the parking lot to the right. After a couple of weeks (we did clean up our mistakes), we could take a bag of garbage, throw it from the patio, and get it directly into the dumpster. This was perfect for those cold winter days when we didn't really feel like going outside.

[Shabo]

People in the dorms at school were usually good about taking their trash out. Sometimes they would put it right outside their door in the main hall while they were cleaning or vacuuming, and forget it, and the RAs on duty would gently remind them it was there and that they needed to get it out by the end of the night. They usually did, since we would remind them every time we walked by. However, there were the lazy bums who would put their bags of trash in the stairwell closest to them. These were never the main stairwells, but rather, the ones that led to fire escapes. The cleaning crew used to get so angry at the disrespect the students showed for the building by doing that. Usually, the bags were leaky, too. Super gross. I had that problem in my hall once, so at about 11:00 at night, when I found it, I asked the person I thought it was if they knew anything about it, (and of course, they always feign innocence), then I went up and down the hall asking people if they knew anything about it. They were all pretty pissed that I woke them up, but hey, if no one handled it, the entire hall was going to get fined for it anyway. Then I went back to the bag of trash and started ripping it open. People usually leave pieces of paper that have their name/address/phone number on it in there, so I found one piece of paper that had a name on it, and lo and behold, my suspicions were quite correct. The person that I thought had done it ended up taking it out, and never did it again.

Seriously though, I hated how lazy people were about that stuff. Just take it with you when you go to your car!

[Becks]

There's a reason I use a paper shredder.

Other people should, too.

It just makes sense. Oh, wait.

[kibbles]

Did you call him to let him know about his personal info.? I agree that he is not the smartest litterbug at all, but I'm curious what his reaction was when you called him?! LOL!

[South Texan]

After a couple of weeks (we did clean up our mistakes), we could take a bag of garbage, throw it from the patio, and get it directly into the dumpster. This was perfect for those cold winter days when we didn't really feel like going outside.

While in grad school, I lived in an apartment complex that was really just a long line of apartments with all front doors opening onto a common walkway in front of the parking lot. Three undergrad male students lived in an apartment on the second floor. How they managed in a tiny one bedroom is anyone’s guess. These guys had a really nasty habit of throwing their cat’s poop off the walkway into the parking lot to see how far they could make it go.

When they changed the litter box, they would just dump all of it over the balcony so it landed on the first floor walkway right in front of our apartments. Complaints and threats from me and other tenants to these guys did nothing. We complained to the manager, but she did nothing - until one day they dumped a litter box while the manager was giving a tour to a prospective tenant and nearly hit the manager with litter, urine and feces.

The guys didn’t last much longer at that place after that.

[protege]

We have neighbors who would do things like that. Nothing like cat poop though. They'd throw their yard waste over the fence into our yard. After several instances, my father soon grew tired of having to clean up the mess, and told them to knock it off. (Keep in mind these are the same people with the security cameras.) The wife got upset since he was "mean and unreasonable" to her. I mean, it was her right to "throw things over the fence." Since her "rights" were being "violated" she called the police....who promptly read her the riot act The cops (yep, you read that right--*cops*--the police department will *not* send a single officer to their house; it's always a pair, and they are *not* allowed to enter that residence. Why? They're crazy. Seriously--the wife lost her job because she's nuts.) simply told her to knock it off, or else we were pressing charges for littering and harassment. Never had that problem again

[Tanasi]

Two good ones:
When I was a Dorm Director it was my decision on how to divide up damage accessments. One year I had a floor of just nasty residents that tore up everything they could and hardly ever took out their trash. At the end of the year between trash, pizza boxes and other damages/messes the accessments were over $1,000 for each resident. One resident and his father came into the housing office the following summer to complain about the accessment. I happened to be there at the time and I told his father and director of housing that this kid probably didn't do any of the damage but he knew who did it and when I asked he wouldn't tell so he's just as guilty. While he didn't exactly beat a confession out of the kid the dad did get results.
Several years ago I bought a piece of property that had been used for dumping for years. I paid some kids to clean it up and haul off the garbage, I posted no dumping and no trespassing signs. A few days later the place was covered in trash, again I paid to clean it up. A few weeks later same thing, I clean it again and erected an 8ft chainlink fence. Month later trashed again, some folks even climbed over the fence to tote their trash over a 100 yards from the road. Cleaned it again and again it was trashed, this time I found a name and address in the trash, I borrowed my wife's large dump truck and put all the trash, appliances, furniture and yard waste in the dump truck and then dumped all that stuff in the driveway of the person name I found. The next time it was a different person but in the same sub-division, after 5 or 6 times of this they finally stopped dumping their trash on my property. My dad had a similar problem 20+ years ago. The city codes office was threatening to have it cleaned up and bill him but he decided to find out who was doing the dumping and he found out it was another part of the city government dumping on him. It cost the city several thousand dollars to clean it up.