Sometimes, people store things in the strangest places.

Imagine you helped someone fix their slow laptop by clearing out old files, and later you discover they kept all their important documents in the Recycle Bin, and now they’re gone for good?

How would you handle it?

In the following story, one IT employee finds themselves in this situation and learns an important lesson.

Here’s what happened.

User got mad!

I had a user call wanting to see if I could speed up his Windows laptop, which was performing a lot slower than it had previously.

One of the first things I checked was disk space, which turned out to be nearly full. I performed a disk cleanup to remove temp files, empty the Recycle Bin, etc. Sure enough, that did the trick.

The user called back a few minutes later, complaining that he couldn’t find any of his files.

The man was angry because his files were gone.

He was angry, telling me I must have deleted them. Of course, I advised him that I did no such thing.

Well, I was wrong. After speaking with the user for a few minutes, the user admitted (without a hint of shame) that he kept all his important files IN THE RECYCLE BIN!

Fortunately, my supervisor understood this wasn’t my fault. The user was coached, and after that, I always asked every user if it was okay for me to empty the Recycle Bin. Sheesh!

Wow! What a place to keep your important files.

Let’s check out what the fine folks over at Reddit have to say about this habit.

According to this reader, it’s pretty common.

Here’s someone with a sense of humor.

Oh no!

Yet another person who uses that as a storage place.

Everyone learned a lesson!

Next time, it’s probably best to find a safer folder somewhere.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.