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People Who Clean Up After Music Festivals Are Sharing The Weirdest Things They’ve Found

A full year without music festivals and giant events has hit party boys and girls where it hurts. What do they even have to talk about anymore?

This strange group of humans who choose to attend such events are a special kind of weird.

Redditor u/Damo-reece666 wanted to know what kind of gems these folks leave behind when they asked:

“People who clean up after festivals and similar events, what’s the best and worst things you have found left behind?”

And it seems like cleaning up after weirdos might be as rewarding as it is disgusting.

Here’s a list of the 23 best and worst things found after a events and festivals.


1.

“I’ve cleaned up and found entire cooking sets and chairs.” –rickrolo24

2.

“I was working at a festival (although not doing clean up) and stayed till the day after. The amount of tents people leave behind – brand new tents! Basically, people just buy new stuff for that festival and then can’t be bothered to bring it home/dispose of it properly. I ended up with a brand new 10 person tent, thanks to some other people’s laziness.” –DoomandBroom

3.

“I’m an usher at my neighborhood movie theatre so idk if this counts but I found a plastic bag under a seat with 6 guppies swimming around inside so I kept the guppies for myself. I had to Google how to take care of fish but it was fun and I still have them today.” –bethanytaylor

4.

“I cleaned up for an event once and it was an event where you weren’t allowed to bring your own alcohol in (so they can get you to buy it from the event itself and whatnot) so cops were taking people’s alcohol. cool, that’s fine. I was cleaning up and two cops walked over and asked if I was 18. I showed them my license to prove I was, and they gave me almost $1000 of untouched alcohol that they’d confiscated from people trying to sneak it in. bottles of vodka and tequila, a lot of beer and rum and a bunch of ciders all given to me cause I was a volunteer and not getting paid otherwise. Was f*cking great” –dorkynoodleman

5.

“I did a clean at a 3 day music festival once. Literally the first night I had to clean one of the portable shower cubicles, because someone had shit in the corner and stuck a cocktail umbrella in it.” –Wheresma10mmsocket

6.

“Bottle of rum, lots and lots of drugs, watches, phones, perfectly good clothes, welly boots, wallets/cash etc. Worst is shit tents. As in, abandoning your tent but doing a massive shit in it before you go so it can’t be reused.” –meehaja

7.

“Not my profession but I lived in the downtown area of my city when I was younger and every year for the last 100 odd years they’ve had a huge festival in that downtown area celebrating the fruit crop. Although nowadays it’s less about the crop and more about the kids from the local university getting wasted. Anyways, I stepped out my back door on the last night of the festival and saw a young woman passed out in the alley. I ran over to her as quick as I could to make sure she was alive. I had 911 on the phone and they advised me to poke her with my foot just in case she was alive and responded aggressively. So I poke this chick with my foot and almost die of a heart attack myself when she leaps up, screams like a fucking banshee and throws an empty bottle of fireball square into my chest. She took off running/stumbling down the alley and stopped about 50 ft away from me, takes off her dress and completely naked, starts pissing in the road. Then she took off down the street. The 911 operator just says “Did she respond to the nudge with your foot?” –Smooth_Bandito

8.

“Not a cleaning person, but I saw a prosthetic leg left at the end of a metal festival.” –pinupgal

9.

“Did it once, as a fundraiser for a youth organization, and collectively we found £3000 and ten mobile phones, and this was during the days when it was a somewhat luxury to have a phone.” –SlackHandful


10.

“We were too wasted to leave a music festival outside of L.A. once, so we just hung out and waited for everyone else to take off. When my bf and I finally got straight enough to pack up we walked through a wasteland of expensive brand name tents and chairs. We put our stuff away and then literally just walked around picking stuff up. The people cleaning had already picked through all the “good stuff” and were literally filling wheelbarrow’s full of things. We ended up scoring a Moosejaw 8 person tent that was barely used. I found a few pair of designer glasses and a crap ton of other clothes like hoodies and very nice jeans. My bf found a really expensive folding knife and a brand new Canon 5D that had one picture of someone’s butt on it. He found a coin purse that had $300 in it and no ID under a styrofoam cooler. We also found a Yeti cooler that was filled with crushed hard seltzer cans and a poo that we cleaned out. We packed his SUV literally to the brim with expensive stuff and have been using it all for years.” –almostsoberhoser