The only tech connection with this story is it involves a Dell laptop but it’s such a good tale it begs to be told. Yesterday morning, a friend of ours was heading out to the airport. The only hiccup was she drove away and left her suitcase with her laptop inside on the sidewalk – something she only realized after driving 30 minutes to the airport. After a frantic telephone call asking if we could see if the suitcase was still there, we figured out it had probably been taken away the garbage-men, who figured the suitcase was, well, garbage.
So what do you do? First, you drive around your neighbourhood to see if you can find the garbage truck. Then, you call the dump to see if there’s any chance you could look through the garbage to find a large red suitcase. Prospects for recovery? Not good. Well, it turns out the garbage guys checked out the suitcase, looked inside to see if there was anything interesting in it, and then removed the laptop – figuring it was their lucky day. One thing led to another and the laptop is miraculously heading its way back to the owner, who owes us and the garbage guys big time.
Those are some honest garbage men. They could have just as easily claimed ignorance and pocketed it. I believe over here the law is your lose ownership once the garbage men have picked up an item left “discarded” – I hear stories of people leaning their bike against bins and finding it gone with no way to get it back other than buy it.
Yes, they’re obviously good guys – very impressed.
I’m shocked that those guys are returning the laptop. Not to say that there aren’t honest people out there, but I’m just as amazed as you are that they actually came through!
But I have to wonder… why were the garbage men looking through the suitcase left outside? Isn’t there a law against going through someone else’s trash?
Just saying…
I hope a nice reward was paid to the garbage men… give them the credit they deserve!
This is actually a fairly common happening. We find valuables being thrown out by accident on a regular basis. There have been at least a half dozen times in the past year or so that that we have dug through a 12 to 15 ton load of garbage to find the following:
– a minister’s wedding band (that was a tough one)
– a retiree’s set of golf clubs
– sensitive legal documents (ongoing cases no less!)
– a bag of puppies (yes, they lived)
– many Christmas gifts accidentally tossed with the wrappings
As far as the legality of going through anothers garbage…our community says that once you place it on the right-of-way for pick up…it is fair game.
Most all of my garbagemen are honest, hard working men (I do have one woman driver). Every now and then there is a “bad apple” as with any group of people and we work to remove that individual. Customer service and the “Golden Rule” are what we live by. We are city employees and not driven by profit.