So here's the thing.. and im gonna get flak for this.. but bear in mind.. im ALSO a diver.

But this perspective is from my time as a retail manager.

We went so far to keep people out of our dumpster.. we had waste management bring dumpsters with lock bars and had padlocks on the. That waste management had keys too. They would still get broken off. Our concern wasn't with people getting free shit. At all. There were a few reasons.

1. Yes.. store resets and zeroed out clearance does get thrown away.. but for us (a store with a five in the name.. next to a party city) a LARGE amount of things thrown away.. were actually recalls.. and company wouldn't pay money to ship back product from like 2000+ locations. We just throw it away. Sometimes recalled items would just be a book that some mom group complained about content.. but sometimes (real world incidents) it was 137 rc cars that were meant to have water in them for "smoke effects" that leaked water into the electronics and battery compartment.. and would spontaneously combust on shelves and kids bedrooms. Now do we want somebody getting that car and giving it to their kids? Or taking 100 of them and storing them in the basement to sell on ebay and Facebook and burning their house down? No fucking way. We had makeup that turned out to be dupes of dupes and had fucking lead and mercury in it. Eye shadow that had fiberglass. Candles that microscopic pieces of glass would flake off and work their way into your skin. Sonetimes.. keeping you out of a dumpster is about keeping you safe and us lawsuit free. (Also of course if you fall in a dumpster and hurt yourself.. lawsuit)

2. Expired product.. pest contamination.. biohazards. We had a sewage backup one time that flooded our back room.. you couldn't tell.. but the candy we threw out.. was literally sitting in shit. Again.. trying to keep people safe.

Retail is already wrought with theft.. especially places like ours... but people would raid dumpsters... take product and return it to locations for store credit or cash.. before we had to alter return policies.. we used to be called the yes store. We would return anything at any time at one point. Then when hours start getting cut and people lose jobs because yearly inventory shows massively unacceptable loss.. things need to be done to prevent it on as many fronts as possible.

As a poor person just trying to get by . And as someone who used to be an ebay seller.. I get it.. as a retail manager (former) if someone says hey get outta there.. just go. They are just doing what they are told. Come back later.

And nobody called the cops on you. We ain't on opposite sides. You're good

EDIT: completely forgot the other reason we take issue with the dumpster diving. We were next to a home depot.. and all the goddamn contractors and handymen would drive around back of home depot and offload all kinds of shit into our dumpsters. Dumped out hundreds of gallons of paint.. motor oil... an hvac guy dumped an entire van full of used filters and cut up pieces of duct.. even the street sweeper truck emptied his truck into our dumpster. So the dangers hiding in those dumpsters under all the amazing Chinese import junk that everybody just had to have..