Have you ever been dumpster diving?

I tried.

I had an unemployed buddy who liked to do the local Kroger dumpster for packaged old food. He brought me some donuts, but I passed on it. 

Not exactly, but kind of. Place where I had my first real job was across a parking lot from a pool hall/ bar. So it was our parking lot..ditch..bar parking lot. I discovered if I get in early enough on a Monday I could walk the length of the ditch and usually find cash in there. Especially in colder windy weather days. Drunken pool players must drop cash when fumbling for their keys and it would all end up in the ditch. The  most I found in one mourning was $60. Which was HUGE find when I was 21 lol. I’d still be excited find that much money. So I’ve been ditch diving... that sounds wrong. 

No. But I had a FIL that loved to do that.  He would bring home food...yuck. And furniture, tools.  He was always mad at Kmart because they would do things like cut the cord off the power tools or spray paint furniture before throwing it out. He thought that was just mean. This post was edited by my2cents at August 7, 2020 6:55 PM MDT

I'm sure it will come to that soon as a necessity.

Fortunately, I haven't had to dumpster dive, but I have taken a small table that was left out for garbage pickup, refinished it and use it as a plant stand.

I haven't but my answer's kind of related to the question that inspired your question.  When the lottery jackpot gets really high, people that normally wouldn't buy tickets start buying them, but some of them don't seem to know that if you match some of the numbers but not all of them you still get a smaller prize.  Anyway, when the Powerball jackpot was $1500000000, my husband went dumpster diving for the tickets people threw away after the drawing.  He got almost $400 that way.  One of the tickets he found was three numbers plus the power ball which was for $200.