[owenfi]

As late teenagers a few friends and I dumpster dived a circuit of retail stores and got some good and interesting odds and ends: fishing reels, acrylic displays, partial set of wine glasses, various tools, a small aquarium…

I worked in a grocery store so didn’t have the need or gumption to dive for food (I was usually the driver…but all aspects were fun), except for one spot: the town Krispy Kreme. Sneaking around back was so much better than waiting in line, and often there was a fresh looking box nestled on top of pillows of old donuts in garbage bags.

Sneaking them into the cheap movie theater was the next challenge.

One day, my parents were having a party and we were playing video games in my room. My aunt burst in, indignantly shouting at us for eating out of a dumpster…we laughed and hatched a plan: sneak out my window so they thought we were still playing games, zip to town, grab some donuts and offer them to the party. Except one problem: when we got there the dumpster was bone dry. The cleanest we had ever seen it. Puzzled for a minute I suck it up and went to the drive through to buy a box of donuts at long last. But then I took the sharpie in my glove box and largely scrawled yesterday’s date. We snuck back in the window, popped back into the party, proceeded to display the “expired” box of donuts, and I pulled one and took a big bite. My aunt was exasperated! We passed the box around and it was fun to see which of my parents’ friends were willing to taste the “dumpster donuts”.

[dfxm12]

and often there was a fresh looking box nestled on top of pillows of old donuts in garbage bags.

Fresh looking food placed like this is usually meant for the homeless to easily pick up.

[dingusdew]

Just a reminder to all that in the USA, grocers are protected by good Samaritan laws if they donate their unused food since 1996.

https://www.feedingamerica.org/ways-to-give/corporate-and-fo...

It would probably be better for more of these places to just donate their food than leaving it out where animals can get to it as well.

[bredren]

I volunteered with some HS peers in 1996 at a shelter.

There was tons of Odwalla brand juice we were giving out in the beverage section of the line.

Seemed a bit strange since it was premium stuff. I remember a guy saying. “Odwalla no. Last time I got sick drinking one of those.”

Just happened to be during the Odwalla E. coli outbreak. Happened a week after that good samaritan act was signed into law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Odwalla_E._coli_outbreak

[mike_d]

Reminder than you should always donate CASH to food banks.

Not only can they buy food in bulk cheaper than you can, it also helps them to build out the logistics and cold storage infrastructure required to accept donations from grocery stores and restaurants.

[toss1]

Yup.

I remember walking in the evening in a nice rural college town, and I saw the biggest rat I've ever seen, just waddling past a house porch - the thing was larger than some good size cats, and was unmistakably a rat when it got in the good lighting.

I was of course just stunned thinking WTF!??!, then walked on, and it turned out that that house was adjacent to the back of a grocery store lot, and the corner where the dumpsters were, only a few dozen yards away in a straight line... Well-stocked dumpsters clearly make for fat & happy rats!