I’ve never had to work INSIDE peoples’ houses, but I was a delivery driver for a long time so I’d get sneak peeks of what folks were up to…and there are a whole lot of weirdos out there.

I especially figured this out when I’d deliver food to folks at two in the morning…you just never know what you’re gonna see.

AskReddit users who go into peoples’ houses for work talk about the weirdest things they’ve seen. Enjoy!

1. Gross!

“One lady in a decently nice apartment was hoarding plastic bottles for the $.05 deposit causing her place to become infested with roaches.

The damage and pest control cost significantly more than she was making from the recycling.”

2. Sketchy.

“I’m a locksmith and there was a foreclosed funeral home that I was rekeying.

It was straight out of a bad horror movie in its creepiness. No power at all and barely any light. The basement was hundred year old masonry with cadaver slabs and a cremation furnace.

Creepy all in its own.

However, when the real estate agent and I were sweeping the building we went to the second floor and there was a make shift scare crow with a shirt with a crude face smeared on it.

There was also a bed sheet covered in blood. Trash strewn about. A pile of cigarette butts. And a couple needles.

Then we heard someone in the next room run across the floor.

I called out “I’m just hear to change the locks” and held a hammer.

There was a pause. Then the sound of a breaking window. And them climbing out.

We immediately left and called the police. The police arrived and swept the building and confirmed a squatter had indeed set up there but was gone.

I then went back and started changing locks.

After about 30 minutes we heard the glass shuffle and two feet land on the floor. I called out again that we were still there. And we left again. Called the police back and they had me change the locks with an officer on site.

A week later the building was set on fire.”

3. Yikes.

“I was 20 years old working as an internet installer (just over 10 years ago).

A cute girl a little older than me ordered service so while I was at her house surveying (both flirting) I told her I had to trace some lines down. It was a studio type MIL suite she was renting behind a house as she was in college.

Started tracing lines and had to look behind her bed. It was just a mountain of used tampons, she had been shoving them under and behind her bed. The rest of the house was relatively clean.”

4. Fleas!

“I’m an EMT, so I’ve seen lots of hoarders, human and animal waste, etc.

But the most aggravating day was when my partner and I got fleas from this dudes house. Our ambulance was swarming with fleas. Her and I were covered in fleas. We could see them jumping around there were so many.

We had to mark out of service to decontaminate the truck and ourselves. It was awful and itchy.”

5. This is awful.

“Worked a maintenance job for a landlord who owned hundreds of properties in a small city. I found a total of three dead bodies in the short time I worked for him.

First one was the worst. Neighbors complained of smell, unable to contact the tenant, so I get sent out. I end up finding dude dead on his couch with the TV still on. The smell was bad, but it gets worse. I call the cops, they in turn call an ambulance to transport.

Dead guy is a huge dude, probably 450 pounds easily. They get his body strapped to the cart and try to wheel him out, but there is no way he is fitting out the door without some maneuvering. It’s me, 2 cops, and 2 emts trying to turn and pivot this lump of rotting carcass through the doorframe.

We get him about 3/4’s of the way out and something slips. Big boy just kinda pops. It was February and still kinda chilly, but the odor and the river of nasty running down the porch was too much for what I was getting paid. Ended up having to hire a special company to handle the cleanup.”

6. So disgusting.

“When I was a caregiver, I was absolutely flabbergasted when I walked into a home where there was dog sh*t everywhere.

No pads, no newspaper, etc. Just dog sh*t e v e r y w h e r e, of all kinds. Dried, fresh, broken into bits, whole pieces…There was a capable adult in the household who could have let the dog out.

I had to bite my tongue, every time I went there and was told to pick it up, because I so badly wanted to go “What in the absolute f*ck is wrong with you motherf*ckers??? How do you live like this when I’m NOT here???””

7. Wild kingdom.

“I work as a mobile computer repair/IT service guy.

Went into a house to work on a laptop, and they happened to be my next-door neighbors. House had an animal smell (people with pets usually do not notice). But this was different.

As I sat down to work on the laptop I heard a loud screech, and a pigmy marmoset jumped from a cabinet onto my head, pulling my hair violently. I then watched as an albino skunk, 3 house cats, 2 small dogs, and various large birds (a mynah, African gray, and what I think was some kind of guinea fowl) all appeared from various rooms and furnishings.

All the animals were kind of friendly (there was no biting), but the sheer volume of animals in that tiny space was crazy. A few weeks later the Department of fish and wildlife and US customs raided their house. I found out later my neighbor smuggled rare animals.

And had several aquariums full of rare poisonous snakes.”

8. Jeez…

“A few years ago when I was an apprentice, me and my qualified colleague (we’ll call him Sam) I was shadowing got sent to a bungalow belonging to an elderly resident to install an extractor fan in the en-suite of his bedroom.

The gentleman was going to be away on holiday during the install, and had left a key in an outdoor wall safe, so we could get in and do the work. Nice easy job.

I went straight to the job in the morning, so I could drill the 4” hole through the wall for the ductwork (the apprentices always get the lame jobs). Sam went to the wholesalers to get the parts and materials, then would meet me on site. (It was the middle of summer in a heat wave, we wanted to get to the beer garden, so we’d get done faster this way. However it adds to the grossness, you’ll see why.)

So I pull up to the house, knock on the door, even though I know he’s not been in for 3 weeks at this point (force of habit, you never know). No answer, so I punch the code in and get the key out the wall safe.

I put the key in the door and opened it.

Instant. gag. reflex.

The smell was so bad I’ll never forget it, it was like a vomit smell almost, very unique though. I put on my respiration mask from my bag, which I’d put on to drill brick anyway, and pushed on.

I opened the door to the bedroom, smells even worse. “Jesus, what’s this guy been doing in here!?” Kept gagging, but walked on.

Then the worst part.

I opened the door to the bathroom. Instantly vomiting in my mask. My legs turned to jelly. My stomach doing cartwheels.

The gentleman was in the bath. Dead.

He’d obviously been there a long time. 3 weeks, at least. I dropped my tools and ran outside. I took off my mask and wiped my face. Shaking and sweating horribly, I had to sit down. I took me a few minutes, but I rang the police (they didn’t seem fazed which surprised me, but I suppose they’ve heard it all.)

Lit a cigarette and rang Sam, while waiting, and told him what had happened, (he knew I wasn’t joking as my voice was so rattled he later told me). He arrived a couple of minutes later, and was actually very comforting (which is a rare thing with the British building trade, it usually all banter and p*ss taking). I don’t blame him for not going inside.

Few more minutes later, the police arrived. I was still in the same place I sat down when I’d come out the building. I could not get up, I was almost frozen in fear. One of the policemen was very sympathetic and helped me up. I gave a statement and they gave me a lift home.

Will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

9. An odd choice.

“Maybe not the weirdest, but the funniest was a framed and laminated poster for the movie “3 Men and a Baby” in the master bedroom.

10. My time to shine…

“It’s my time to shine.

I used to work as an installation technician for a popular satellite tv service. I saw everything you can think of. Naked people, lonely housewives, hoarders, drug addicts, filth you wouldn’t believe, porn mongers, too much to list.

My most unforgettable story was a time I went to a house out in the country. A little sh*tty looking from the outside, but I wouldn’t judge customers based on that. I go to the front door; it’s blocked off. I go around back, up some steps to the back porch. The customers welcome me in through the sliding glass door which must be broken because it only opens about ten inches.

This guy and his wife are sitting at the kitchen table with their three teenage daughters, all with lit cigarettes and clearly strung out/hungover. Again, not my life and I’m not one to judge. I do my normal bit that I’m required to say and then get to work putting a dish on their roof. I come back in and tell them I need to go into the basement to run the lines for their new boxes, and this is where it gets fun:

“Oh, you don’t want to do that, buddy,” says Mr. Customer.

“Why not?” TenPieceLips asks politely. “It’s really the only way I can route the cable where I need to.”

“Because,” says Mrs. Customer, “our septic tank backed up into the basement.”

F*ck me, I think to myself. This is going to smell, but I really had no other option.

Here’s the thing: their basement had a door to the outside that was frozen open. It was February and bitter cold. Their septic system backed up and filled the basement with about a foot of sh*t, which then froze solid. I go into the basement and spend a good thirty minutes running cable over my head balancing very carefully, as I am now basically ice skating on sh*t lake. And now it gets scary.

When I’m nearly done in the basement I realize I can hear them yelling upstairs. Not like a parent scolding a child. I hear multiple voices shouting at the top of their lungs. Keep your head down, I think to myself, finish the job and get out of here.

As I get back upstairs, I am hit with a wave of noise. Every person in the house is yelling and I see that two people are being held back from each other. I duck into a room and start connecting boxes so I can get the f*ck out.

Apparently, one of the daughters had a boyfriend there and they had a disagreement. He said some thing nasty to her and then she told her mother, who confronted him. More words must have been had, because then it turns into a physical and violent altercation.

It’s at that moment as this 40 yo woman and teenage boy are being restrained and screaming at each other, that the mother yells “If the f*cking cable guy wasn’t here, I would kill you right the f*ck now!”

All I can think at this point is that I need to get the f*ck outta here. I don’t want to watch a murder or have to deal with police. I practically ran out of that place, no signatures, no follow up with the customer. I didn’t get paid enough for that sh*t.

To give an indication of how f*cked up this job could be: on my very first job (basically shadowing another tech) dude’s house was covered in dog sh*t and I saw his testicles.”

11. Get outta there.

“When I was in college one of my jobs was delivering pizzas.

One of our new employees accepted an order to a neighborhood we weren’t supposed to deliver to (for safety), but since we’d already confirmed the order and it was on the same route as another delivery, we decided to go ahead and make the delivery.

The neighborhood was weird. About half the houses looked empty, just pitch black, there weren’t any street lights, there were a bunch of people loitering around aimlessly…I didn’t know what to make of it.

Found the address and knocked on the door, this shirtless, sweaty kid who looks about 14 opens the door wide. I hear a big commotion behind the kid so I glance inside.

I saw 3 or 4 teenage girls, with a bunch of guys who also mostly looked like teenagers, running train on them. Everyone was naked. It was disgusting.

The kid at the door must have seen the disgusted look on my face, because he gave this weird smile and held out a sweaty, balled-up bill to pay for the pizza.

Man, was I glad to get out of there.”

Have you ever worked a job where you had to go into peoples’ houses?

If so, tell us about some of the weird things you’ve seen at work.

Do it in the comments!