Cash for trash... no, literally!
The Story:
This semester I have had the privilege of living with three college roommates.
The four of us were suitemates and decided to put all the beds in one room,
creating a "hang out" room with the other. This decision created quite possibly
the world's most heavily used dorm room in history. Friends from all over campus
come and go all day long; and a couple *cough cough* don't exactly go. Where was
I? This semester I have had the privilege of living with three
six college roommates. Anyway, we've been there for each other through the good
and bad, the thick and thin, but most importantly, the stench. College is a time
of your life when you lack many things: food, sleep, and common sense for
instance... but there is one area that every student is "filthy" rich in.
Garbage. Four college guys alone produce approximately enough trash in one week
to power the Discovery space shuttle to Neptune and back. Now imagine the trash
produced by the additional 48,000 visitors that stop by our room every day to
sit on our couch, eat, then throw their trash away and leave. To give you a
better idea of the mass of this problem, our trash usually looks something like
this approximately 7 minutes after being taken out:
Since an Olympic swimming pool sized dumpster really wouldn't be practical for our dorm room, the trash usually multiplies at exponential factors and low and behold we have a mountain of rubbish the size of New Hampshire again in 1 day. It seems that even though trash is overflowing out into the hallway, people think if you keep throwing it on top of Mount Trashmore it will magically disappear! Instead of getting frustrated or arguing over who needs to take out the trash bi-minutely, the popular solution seems to be to keep letting it pile up and stink until we can no longer find the door. Only then do we bring in the bulldozer and jackhammer. Now you know me, I'm a pretty easy going guy, and never sarcastic... so to prove my point I usually take pictures of our trash when it becomes humorously out of control and send them to our friends. Well, a few weeks ago I started thinking.... hmmmmm if only trash were worth money. Ironic. I decided to type up a funny description and list our trash on eBay as a joke. I listed it under the "Really Weird" category as "Colorful assortment of college dorm trash!" Here is a screenshot of the listing:
[click to enlarge]
I started the auction at 1 cent but set the shipping fee at $25.00 just in case someone actually bid a penny. Two people including myself and I thought the auction was pretty funny. A few days passed. I checked the auction one morning and fartman5000 had bid $1.00 "Who would be that stupid?" I thought to myself! Did he not see the $25.00 shipping fee? A few more days passed. Enter socksniffer101. This guy seriously came out of nowhere and bid $15.00 I could not believe it. I checked his profile to see if he was just a deadbeat bidder. What I saw next can only be described as "falling on the floor laughing in disbelief". Socksniffer had 128 feedback listings all from just as ridiculous auctions he had won including "absolutely nothing" about 25 times, pet rocks named Dave, and common people's autographs. Go check it yourself at http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=socksniffer101.The next day I received this email:
Subject: Question for seller -- Item
#1785749577
hi,
i placed a bid on this item.i`m just wandering,if ebay ends this auction early
for some stupid reason or if i get outbided and the other buyer doesn`t come
thru with payment would you still selll it to me
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Part of me thought, "surely this is a joke". I emailed him back very professionally asking if he knew what the shipping fee was and which "trash package" he wanted. I immediately received this reply:
hi,
i`m aware its a $25 shipping cost.the 3rd choice is the one i want
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If you count to the third actual description of trash in the auction, it's approximately 6,000 sunflower seed shells. Then I started to think Socksniffer was trying to outsmart me... knowing it would realistically be pretty expensive to mail that many sunflower seeds. However, I checked the prices and it could still be done for the current auction price. I emailed back informing Socksniffer that it was APPROXIMATELY 6,000 and not exact. To my disbelief yet again, I received this response:
hi,
i`m not intersted in the sunflower seeds.i want the hair clipping,toe nails,&
snot wads
--------------------
To make this story that is already too long somewhat shorter, we emailed back and forth in a somewhat business manner until the auction ended. The auction ended at a whopping $61.00...$36.00 plus $25.00 shipping; and the final bidder of course didn't pay. Do do de do! Socksniffer to the rescue! He still wanted his trash. He even agreed to pay whatever the final bid was!
hi,
i`ll pay what ever the final bid was.hey what else do i get besides the hair,toe
nails,& snoty tissue
--------------------
I emailed him once again to double check exactly what it was he wanted me to send him. This is what he said:
hi,
just throw in what ever is trash.the last time i bought trash,they threw in old
wrappers,half eaten cupcakes,a pepsi bottle w/some in it (with back wash of
course),etc...should i use the email address you have here or do you an other
one just for paypal.i know your trash is worth $61.hey sorry for my box being
full all the time.
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PSYCHO! This guy had even bought trash before! I know your trash is worth $61?! People kept asking me about the latest Socksniffer emails, still thinking it was all a joke. I left for the weekend not thinking too much else about it. When I returned Sunday... it happened. I had this email message waiting for me which is now framed in my room:
hi,
i sent payment yesterday.i can`t wait to get my trash :)
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I quickly logged into PayPal to check my balance. It was for real! Five hours later, after I finally caught my breath from laughing, I realized I really had to send this guy some trash! Quick! I needed hair, toe nails, and snot wads! I began collecting the items in individual plastic lunch bags and wiped my tears of laughter up with tissues to send him:
Thanks to those anonymous friends who contributed their hair and nails! I packed everything up in an large yellow envelope along with a few super smelly "extras" that are sure to satisfy Socksniffer's craving for trash:
I stopped when the envelope was bulging full, and addressed it to our friend Matt, a.k.a Socksniffer, making sure to leave off my return address to avoid rotten trash coming back to me:
I had to fight back the laughter again when the postal worker at the counter asked me if my package contained any valuable or "perishable" items. Valuable, maybe to some... Perishable... what if it has already perished? Does rottable count? I can only imagine the smell of the extra goodies I included such as pizza crust when this guy gets his package! The actual shipping cost? $2.21... $59.00 profit doesn't sound too bad to me! Here's the receipt from the post office, I think I might frame it with the email too:
In conclusion? I guess I learned two valuable lessons from all this. 1) People really will buy absolutely anything and 2) eBay is the place to sell it. I don't know if this guy has more money than he knows what to do with it, is going to do DNA experiments on our hair and toe nails, or is trying to set some kind of strange record, but this is one of the funniest things I've seen happen in a long time. Hmmm.. Perhaps I'll list a few more "interesting" items soon... New car here I come!