Shopping At A Discount

I got home fairly late last night—around 12:30AM—and as I pulled into my parking spot, stumbled across a rather curious covert operation in progress near my apartment building.

A pick-up, with the engine running, was pulled up next to the dumpster, and a group of about four people were quickly and silently working together to extract a large piece of wooden furniture from the trash bin and put it in the back of the truck.

The group seemed a little concerned at my arrival, but I didn’t care too much about their midnight treasure hunt and just went up to my apartment.

It didn’t surprise me that someone would get furniture out of a dumpster—people love thrift stores, flea markets and garage sales, and dumpster diving is not all that different. What did surprise me is that this group thought they needed to wait until late at night and be sneaky about it. I mean, who cares if someone takes away the trash that you don’t want?

Who knows, maybe the furniture collectors were Swedish. Apparently, it’s illegal to find treasure in another man’s trash there…