“The Carpet Was Just Like Squish Squish Squish”: 30 Wild Things Workers Saw In Clients’ Homes

Electrician here. Was wiring a new room when I stumbled upon a secret door. Behind it? A small, fully decked-out disco room—mirror ball, neon lights, the works, all crammed into a space no bigger than a closet. The homeowner just winked and said, 'Every house needs a little secret party spot.' I've seen a lot of odd things, but that secret disco takes the cake. Made me wish I brought my dancing shoes to work.

I was the house that was weird. We had a small kitten that was full of energy. He would jump on our wooden rocker and by the time you noticed movement the cat would be long gone. It legit looked like a ghost so we nicknamed him "floor demon."

We had a termite inspector come by and he commented that the rocker was rocking by itself. I said, "Oh, it's just the floor demon."

For some unknown reason I never thought to explain what the floor demon actually was.

Yeah, he never came back to our house again.

Large bee hive in a bedroom. It was inside the home and on the outside. Bedroom door was closed and owner said it’s the bee’s room now.

I used to do on-site tech support for an internet service provider. Both of my instances involved animals. One was a goat that was a “house pet” and chewed up the hem of my pants as I worked. The other was 2 pet chinchillas, which I was encouraged to interact with (they were so soft!). On the drive home, my eyes started pouring water and eventually swelled shut. I had to pull over, flush them with water, and wait it out. Turns out I’m extremely allergic to chinchillas.

A ladder outside leading up to a small window in the attic. That’s where his family of pet raccoons lived. The raccoons were using the ladder.

I work for a company that renovates apartments in between tenants. We often find a lot of gross stuff (the photos sent in the group chat with my field guys when they’re one-upping each other give me nightmares sometimes lol) but the worst I’ve seen in person was when I went to walk a unit with the construction manager after the previous tenant moved out and it just…stank. Like **STANK** stank, like absolute f*****g s**t. It was like walking into a brick wall of stink.

We were walking around trying to find the source of the smell and noticed that it was particularly bad around this one closet in the hall. I tried to open the closet, door was stuck. The construction manager tries and gets it open with considerable effort, at which point we are confronted with a roughly shoulder-height wall of dog and/or cat s**t in various stages of rot. If you’ve seen photos of people’s cubicles filled with balloons by their coworkers, imagine that, but the balloons are animal s**t. It was so clumped up that nothing fell out when we opened the door. Just one solid piece.

The rest of the apartment was pristine. Almost surgically clean. But that one closet was horrifying.

Went to an apartment building to do a structural assessment of the property. When it was completed we were asked to go to an apartment where a tenant was complaining of extreme humidity in every type of weather, even though nobody else on the floor, or the ones above or below complained of anything.

So we get in there and are instantly punched in the face with humidity. We're talking rainy season in the Amazon levels of humidity. I have never experienced anything like it before. There was water droplets on every surface of the apartment. She has been pretty diligent at trying to keep the walls and stuff dry, but she was like 80 years old and you'd walk through and the carpet was just like squish squish squish with water pooling around your shoes.

She had this sliding door that opened up to her balcony and from all the water dripping down it onto that section of the carpet there was a mushroom forest. We're talking like dozens and dozens of mushrooms ranging from 2" tall to 2' tall. Just insane to see.

So we start looking around and pretty quickly see the problem. The lady was too elderly to go down to the bottom floor to do her laundry every time she needed to wash something, which apparently was multiple times a day. So she asked her son to install a washer and dryer in her apartment. First it was against the rules of the tenancy agreement, but he also did a horrible s**t job. There was no place for the dryer to vent out anywhere, so in his infinite wisdom he took a big bucket, filled it with water, and then put the hose for the dryer vent into the bucket for some reason. She would fill up this bucket with the drain water from the washer as the hot air bubbled through it throughout the day just unleashing buckets of humid water into the air. So you have this massive bucket, that was pretty much a trough, taking up 3/4 of her closet with this washer dryer setup taking up the remaining space.

She created thousands and thousands of dollars in damage to the apartment. The whole flooring system had to be ripped out and removed. A lot of other things had to be ripped out too. I think all of her furniture was water damaged and swollen and started to get moldy after the washer and dryer were removed, same with a lot of her clothing and bedding/mattress as well. So she was out like $20,000 because her renters insurance does not cover willful ignorance that causes destruction of property and belongings.

Went to a house to evaluate it for residential solar. Very nice lady says "want to see my grow chamber?" It was a very professional setup, small amount of Marry Jane plants. She was going to expand. It wasn't legal at the time. I pointed out that after the solar was installed a city inspector would be stopping by to inspect the connection at her electrical service panel, which was in the grow room.

The owners of the house were big game hunters. As soon as you walked through the door you were greeted by two giraffe shoulder mounts. And all throughout the house they had taxidermy everywhere. Walking across zebra skin rugs into a room with a whole pride of lions. Going up the stairs that were lined with ducks with a bobcat posed to try and catch one. All of that and they couldn’t figure out a way to get the squirrel out of their attic.

Went to install a new furnace in a house. Found a sprinkler head attached to a live gas line.

When I did a home visit for a lady with dementia with her husband, I noted their bedroom door was very unusual. It was split in half horizontally so that you could shut the door fully, or just the bottom half on separate hinges. He explained that she would become more confused in the evenings ('sundowning'). It was to stop her from wandering out of the house while he was making dinner, but she would still be able to see out and talk to the family, and he could keep an eye on her. It reminded me of a horse stable door, never knew what to think of it.

Deliverer of Pizza here, delivered probably 20 pizzas to a motel room, thing was it was just one dude there and a whole lot of sexual paraphernalia scattered around the room, he also answered the door wearing nothing but cheetah print undies, that image will forever be burnt into my retinas. 🫠.

I work in state housing maintanence so we tend to see the worst of the worst when I comes to houses.

Off the top of my head;
- house with the whole floor covered in empty soft drink bottles piled up to knee height. (Through every single room)

- house so badly cockroach infested that every surface in the house was moving

- unit where all the floor was coated in a layer of dried cat p**s and cat s**t everywhere.

- unit where someone overdosed and wasn't found for a week or two. Needles everywhere surrounded by filth + a roughly human shaped outline of fleshy gunk on the floor in the living room.

A 15 foot wide, 10 ft high nude oil painting.

Customer: “You like it?”

Me: “Uh, yeah…it’s a nice painting.”

Him: “That’s my wife. She’s on her way now, she’ll be here soon.”

I then sat with the two of them for an hour, having a coffee right beside this massive nude painting, trying not to look at it or his wife.

A client naked; I was a dog walker. I actually thought she was a beautiful statue until she moved and screamed. The next day she apologized, but I told her it was okay and I thought they had bought a new statue. She was disabled, and myself being a woman, we had a nice laugh and I'm sure she appreciated the compliment.

Oddly large amount of blood, like suspiciously larger than a shaving nick or a nose bleed in and around a bathroom sink and floor, with a blood soaked swiffer pad in the trash.

Empty crib except a Chucky plushie.

Tons of empty syringes in the garbage can. Asked the client if he was sure he wanted them mixed in with the regular outside trash or if he had a container for them. I just assumed diabetic. Until he got all weird and muttered "nah, nah, just toss em, just get rid of em".

Fully carpeted home, bathrooms included, with extra mats in front of every toilet, tub, sink, fridge, microwave, stove, couch, chair, cabinet etc. Carpets on carpets on carpets.

V******r next to a jar of mayonnaise on the kitchen counter.

ETA: these are all different houses. Sorry, should've specified that lol.

Used to deliver furniture in college. Someone had us deliver a bunk bed to their basement … coitus dungeon.

I nannied for a family who was going through some serious s**t behind the scenes, and it got weird for me so often. They had 2 kids, a 1.5 year old girl and a 3 year old boy. The mom, a doctor, would come home from work and lock herself in her room for hours while the kids banged on the door and cried for her. The dad, also a doctor, also locked himself in his office a lot and would make me be the go-between for his wife and himself. There was one morning he asked her what was for dinner tonight, and she burst into tears, pulled him behind a door and furiously started whispering stuff, came back in the room, flung something out of the freezer, and stormed out. Nothing was normal in that house. The secret lives of rich people, eh?

I'm a window cleaner, it's a luxury service so most of our clients are fairly well off. I don't know if it is weird but people like to test us. I've seen a literal chest full of cash open on someones bed. They knew we were coming, it had to be intentional. I ignored it, but some might be tempted. I've seen some pipes and other d**g paraphernalia but nothing too crazy.

A pet Racoon but it wasn't exactly a pet more like a wild animal they forced to live with them. They even said as much- he showed up on their porch and they let him in and decided he was cute enough to stay... it was mean and I wouldn't go anywhere near it.