People who have jobs where you go inside homes, what's the worst thing you've seen?

1. The bathroom floor covered in feces and urine...floor stained brown and I had to clean it on my fucking hands and knees. Going to quit this job this week.
   — deanie1970


2. This one is bad, not so much for its gross factor but rather the circumstances. I used to work in pest control in a major city and this included so low-income rentals. I was inspecting for bed bugs when sure enough, I found them in one of the units. Being that this was a number of years ago, it was and probably still is standard practice to toss out the mattress entirely. Have you ever tried to tell someone who probably has no disposable income that they need to throw out their mattress and buy a new one? That pretty much killed my day...
   — xPeachesV


3. I used to clean carpets. We went to a double-wide trailer once that had about 20 cats inside, plus 3 dogs. I didn't see a single litterbox, and by the time we were done, the slate-gray carpet was almost white again. The ammonia smell inside about made me puke, but the old couple that lived there acted like nothing was wrong...
   — stylinchilibeans






4. I used to work for a carpet cleaning company. Iv had some interesting stories but this one always takes the cake. We had this program where we hired special needs people part time. So we hire this new guy, bob. Bobs a rather large fella, not the fastest thinker but real nice to work with. Bob and I showed up to clean a couple rooms in this couples mansion. It was immaculate, two gay men in their 40s. Nevermind the paintings of half naked dudes all over the walls. So part of our job is to move furniture to clean under them. I had bob help move the bed, and this giant two foot leopard print veiny dick rolls out like a dead possum. Bob stares. No words spoken... I clean around it, kick it under the bed and move it back. Bob and I finish the job and get in the van to leave. Bob turns to me and says, ‘ where did they get that leopards dick, and what are they gonna do with it?’ I still cannot tell this story without laughing.
   — LucifersYam


5. I did remodels for a while. The worst one was a legitimate hoarder. That house was disgusting. She had to clear a path for us to get to the bathroom with our tools so we could work. Lots of cats too. The house smelled very strongly of cat piss. I'll never forget when I went to the back looking for the water hose. There was a pool filled with disgusting algae covered water and a dead cat floating in it. I was very happy when that job was over. At least her bathroom looked great.
   — foxtrottits


6. I used to clean carpets for a living and we were sent to a section 8 home that had recently had the electricity shut off. We went in to survey the situation and, after locating a flashlight, realized the six-foot high mound in the living room was all dirty diapers. We did not clean that carpet.
   — alejo699






7. Heating company person here. We went into a home to install a new furnace, but turns out he needed a new heat run put into the bathroom upstairs. I should also mention that the dude has been without running water, electric and gas for about 2 years. Guess what we found piled up all over the bathroom floor? I honestly don't know how he was living there, but we called some people to get him the help he needed. (It was poop.)
   — A_Two_Slot_Toaster


8. Friend is a realtor with a bunch of crazy stories. She said she had a client wanting to sell his house. No problem. My friend sends a coworker out to take pictures of the place. When the coworker shows up she says that it might be hard to use the pictures because the house was damn near covered in dicks. Dick statues, dick pictures, dick paintings, dick shrines, and so on. It was like a dick museum. The owner decides to have a yard sale to help with the realtor fees. My friend goes over to help the customer with what he wants to sell. Going through everything she discovers he has bed bugs. She said they ended up going through 3 rounds of bed bug treatment before the yard sale. She was trying to convince him that 1) Nobody wants all your dick stuff and 2) Everything is covered with bed bug treatment. He was very adment about doing the yard sale and sure enough he sold all his dick stuff.
   — Mommasaur


9. Not a current job that I hold, but I used to be a Funeral Director and I had to go into someone's home who died and the police had to kick the door in and call us out. It was the worst thing I have ever seen, she had rubbish everywhere and looked like she never chucked anything away. She had a cat and we couldn't see any litter tray anywhere, just Cat shit/piss in random corners and more hair on her clothes/furniture than on the cat likely (we never saw the Cat so I bet it was buried under all her rubbish). The worst thing was how she died. She must have had some form of stomach cancer because she had died choking on her own poo as she vomited it up. What happens is that if you have an obstruction in the gut such as a tumour, sometimes it gets trapped and the body forces it upwards and in her case she had sicked up her own shit and literally choked on it. It was everywhere - coming out of her nose, mouth and in bags around her (including the one she was still holding when she died). Loads of blood too, so I don't doubt her Esophagus was injured or somewhere in her digestive tract. I don't know how me and my colleague didn't get any on our shoes, even the police struggled to not stand in any blood or shit that day. It has stuck with me for the past year after seeing it which is no easy feat as I have seen a few putrid sights. Edit Wow, Reddit gold! Thank you kind stranger
   — strikeapose83






10. TV repairman here. I've seen my fair share of nasty houses, a couple outright hoarders, etc. But I'm going to go with the most memorable sign of money. I was working on a bedroom TV and there were a couple maintenance or plumbing guys working in the bathroom attached to the room. The home owner was bumbling around, and at some point the plumber says to her "we just got a call and the new tub finally arrived from Italy. We can get it installed next week if we pull out the old one today, but you won't have a bath in the master bath over the weekend." She goes "Paul, don't be ridiculous. We have nine other bathrooms in this house I think I'll survive a couple days." It really wasn't the worst in any way, it was just absurd.
    — alexthealex


11. I used to work for a company that did fire, water, and mold clean ups. We got called to a mold clean up due to water damage, and these people were hoarders. Useless shit stacked to the ceiling. All of it had to get tossed due to being in contact with a really toxic form of mold. So once we reach the basement and we’re tossing shit, we find TWO cat carcasses. The whole basement smelled terrible. We knew something was up, but we couldn’t really put our finger on it until we found the decayed cats. The owners just shrugged it off. Disgusting people.
    — crusty_peach


12. One of our clients had a water line breakage in their home and called in a claim. Our claims adjuster went out and then called us back immediately telling us he had just got done throwing up and we needed to get off this policy IMMEDIATELY. It turns out they had converted a bedroom into a litter box room. Instead of using litter boxes, they just dumped new litter into the room on the floor. He said the litter was about 2 ft high, filled with excrement, and the whole house smelled so bad it made him sick. It was also a horder-esque type situation with piles and piles of "trash" everywhere. We had to go out and investigate and his descriptive phone call didn't scratch the surface of how bad this home was.
    — Booner999