You Found what in the Porta Potty?!
I have only been in the portable restroom business for just shy of 5 years, but let me tell you, in those years I have been amused at the stories our pumpers have shared about the many items found in our portable toilets. It’s typical to find the occasional diaper, feminine product or the oh so common graffiti but, portable toilet finds go much further.
Before I continue, let me explain, to clean a porta potty, it must be pumped empty with a hose. Bulk items cannot be pumped out; thus, our pumpers carry grabbers. These grabbers are a pumper’s best friend. Let’s compare it to a man’s fishing pole. You cast it in the blue water and fish out whatever foreign objects cannot be pumped out.
Wristlets, Credit Cards, Cell Phones & Concrete Sculptures!
One of our pumpers once brought a Coach wristlet back to the office that he fished out of the tank of a porta potty at a fair. Only after putting rubber gloves on, did we open it. Inside we found a good sum of money along with a single credit card. We ended up calling the credit card company, giving them the card number and asking them to contact the card holder, advise them we retrieved the wristlet and give them our company name and telephone number.
Cell phones are commonly found in the porta potties. I can understand how this happens more since, I myself have had my cell phone drop out of my back pocket and into the toilet. Thankfully, this happened at my home rather than a porta potty. Usually, if it is a phone we find, the owner is contacting us, before the phone even makes it back to our shop. Thank goodness for cell phone insurance!
But not all things found in a portable toilet are found in the tank. On a construction site, one of our pumpers found a concrete sculpture of the male genital organ. I guess the construction worker was also an inspiring artist!
We May Have Not Found It but Another Company Did!
I consider our company to be lucky though. Other companies have found much worse. According to John Talk, in July 2013 a pipe bomb was found by a sanitation worker in Lakewood, Washington. 50 people had to be evacuated before the bomb was safely destroyed. According to List verse, a construction worker once found a lot of mail inside a porta potty. This mail included checks, holiday cards, coupons and more. After an investigation, it was concluded that a former USPS carrier had dumped the mail. He was eventually charged with felony mail theft. In 2015 a young man in Michigan hid a camera in a coffee cup in a public toilet at a fair. He provided evidence, when he took selfies as he hid the camera. The camera was only in place for a day and the only pictures taken were of himself. He too faced felony charges. What were they thinking?
On a happier note, in Australia, in 2011 a janitor found $93,000 in the trash cans and tank in a portable toilet. He turned it over to authorities, whose investigation failed to find the origin of the money. Eventually a judge awarded $76,000 to the janitor. The remaining funds went to the state. This just proves, in the long run, honestly does pay off!
And last but not least…according to the BBC, a woman was using a porta potty when it was moved with a forklift to the other side of the harbor during a festival in Cornwall, England. The woman was not injured but the forklift operator suffered from a case of shock after finding the woman inside!
In the Famous Words of Forrest
In short, to use the words of Forrest Gump, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get”, when you live life as a pumper that is!
