Dumpster diving for a retainer

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Dumpster diving for a retainer

(First question at this AAM post)

My coworker made her daughter go through our dumpster to find a lost retainer

I work at a company that, among other things, runs summer programs for kids. Some employees have kids who attend these programs. One of my coworkers, “Zoe,” has a 12-year-old daughter who is enrolled, “Carrie,” who seems like a really sweet kid. A few times now, Carrie has apparently taken out her retainer at lunch, wrapped it in a napkin while she eats, and then forgotten it’s there, so she has ended up throwing it away with the rest of her trash. Each time this has happened, Zoe has made Carrie come back to our site later that day to go through the trash dumpster to find the retainer. The sight of this girl forced to sit in a dumpster of trash and dig through other people’s leftover spaghetti and used tissues and whatever else is in the trash really bothers me — it seems cruel and humiliating. This is happening in front of a bunch of Zoe’s coworkers, and as far as I know no one has said anything to her about it.

I don’t want to tell Zoe how to raise her child, but I know I was a sensitive kid who would have been really bothered by this. Would I be out of line to mention that to her and suggest that she find a different way of handling it?

Well, you’re writing to someone whose mom made me sift through the school dumpster on two separate occasions for exactly the same reason. I did find my retainer both times, and I stopped losing it after that. (You’re not kidding about it being gross, though.)

Orthodontics are expensive! Moreover, if Zoe simply replaces it each time without making Carrie try to find it first, she’s decreasing the chances of Carrie learning to be responsible with it.

So I’m on Zoe’s side with this. (My mom would have deeply enjoyed seeing me write those words.) It’s not an unreasonable parenting move. It does suck for Carrie, but just in the way that some parts of learning to be a responsible human suck at that age, not in a way that rises to cruelty.

As long as Zoe isn’t yelling at Carrie or berating her during the dumpster excavation, see this as just something that might happen in a workspace that serves lunch to employees’ kids.

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The commentariat there is split with something like 95% of folks reminiscing of their own equivalent experiences or saying that the answer is reasonable, while the other 5% is all “this is actually abuse” or “it is too risky”.

i mean, if the child is so sensitive, she would have started making better choices about where she rests her retainer. It's not nice, but those things are expensive.

~~And she's not making her do it while others are around, she's bringing her back after hours.~~ stiking this because op is unclear about whether she's coming back later or having to do it right then.

The real issues are a) what if there's something dangerous in the dumpster, and what if the company fire Zoe for having her kid root through the dumpster because of liability.

Edited 2026-08-13 22:29 (UTC)

I disagree that everyone who is sensitive will have the executive function to find a good location for their retainer, especially at age 12. Many of us were raised to see those things as directly related, but executive function issues often mean they really, really aren't. As a parent, "THAT'll teach you a lesson!" needs to...actually teach a lesson? Like: can we come up with a better default place for Carrie to put her retainer while she's eating, and can we come up with ways to make that an ingrained habit?

As a parent, "THAT'll teach you a lesson!" needs to...actually teach a lesson? Like: can we come up with a better default place for Carrie to put her retainer while she's eating, and can we come up with ways to make that an ingrained habit?
Exactly. In this case, "teach them a lesson" really just means "punish them." What skills has Carrie learned from this exercise? Dumpster diving?

but we don't know that carrie is sensitive. op only describes herself that way.

we also have no idea what steps mom has taken because all this is being reported by a co-worker who describes this as an "apparently" but then talks as if she's witnessing it.

I agree that things meant to teach a lesson should, but also, what is the alternative here? retainers are too expensive to replace every time, so either carrie has to retrieve her property or end up with dental issues. (and i had a case for mine, but that didn't mean i didn't have to fish it out of the bin a couple of times.) sometimes you just have to do the thing because you have to do the thing.

Edited 2026-08-14 10:03 (UTC)

It won't teach her to not lose her retainer if the problem is executive function and not motivation. (So much of parenting, teaching, and managing is based on the assumptions that everything is motivation. It's not.)

But it's not a punishment, it's a natural consequence. Punishment would be "You forgot to make your bed, now go dumpster diving." Natural consequence is "Your retainer that we can't afford to replace is currently in the dumpster because of your actions. Even if it never teaches you not to lose it again, it's in the dumpster because of your actions, and the life lesson here is that someone has to fetch it out, and you're old enough to be the one taking responsibility for your actions."

When I forget to take perishable groceries out of my backpack and they go bad, having to throw them out and pay to replace them is not a punishment, it's a natural consequence.

This is leaving aside safely issues and just addressing the punishment and lesson aspect.

i mean, if the child is so sensitive, she would have started making better choices about where she rests her retainer. It's not nice, but those things are expensive.

For some children/teenagers/adults

stress makes memory/organisation worse

and so the stress of dumpster diving could actually INCREASE the chance of losing the retainer again.

I like the suggestion in the Ask A Manager comments that LW buys a small retainer case that the daughter can wear on a lanyard around her neck, so that there's an easy/obvious clean place to put the retainer while eating that isn't a serviette.

The 'happening in front of a bunch of Zoe's coworkers" bit is bothering me.

If they're doing it after hours and this is being told after-the-fact, then that's one thing. The fact that LW knows about this and implies she knew about it while it was happening, however, suggests that the child is being made to sift through the dumpster in front of other people - or that Zoe is talking about it in the office while the kid is still there. Neither is a particularly salutory outcome.

If the dumpster gets emptied at the end of the day, I don't know that doing it after hours is an option.

A lot of places now lock dumpsters after work hours, to prevent non-employees from dumping stuff in it (a lot of people seem to have zero problems with dumping their personal old furniture/electronics/trash in random open dumpsters) and/or going through it.

You need to do it ASAP, the longer you wait the worse it will be. I can't imagine the dumpster is in a place where all of Zoe's friends will be gathered around laughing, though.

My immediate thought is “why isn’t the mother making it easier for Carrie to keep track of her retainer, by using some kind of solution other than wrapping in a napkin”?

Like, she could have a little pouch that hangs around her neck, or a lunchbox with or special compartment, or any other solution that doesn’t result in this kind of punitive response.

Yes, the mother can’t afford to replace indefinite numbers of retainers, but it doesn’t sound like she’s doing anything to make this easier on her daughter.

(As someone who was a kid with undiagnosed ADHD, shaming/blaming/punishing works a lot less well than coming up with a way to make things easier to remember!)

Though we’re also assuming that that hasn’t been tried. We’ve come up with a lot of solutions for my kids to remember stuff but when they don’t use them, it doesn’t work. For all we know there might be a little retainer box in the lunchbox but if the kid doesn’t remember to use it, because the napkin’s right there…

My mother packed my brother's retainer case in his lunchbox, and it didn't prevent him from throwing his retainer away

If this has happened more than once or twice then yeah, she needs to find another method to help her kid remember.

Does LW have another method to suggest?

this might be my OCD talking, but I cannot imagine putting something that had been in a dumpster back into my mouth, no matter how much it had been cleaned

or making someone else do that

I think that's the ocd talking. Retainers are explicitly designed to be easy to sterilize.

Pretty sure I don't have OCD, but I do have problems with 'gross' things, and I'd be hard-pressed to use such a thing if it came from public/non-household trash. Not that my household's trash is like, sterile, but it's the mental thing of "your own stuff is less gross even if only because it's yours". Well, I'm also just more aware of what's in my household trash, so I can make a better judgement on if it's tolerable — sometimes it's not!

In these days of 3D printing, aren't retainers a whole lot cheaper than they used to be?

I don't know about retainers, but my night guard cost $800, not covered by insurance.

YIIIKES.

You best believe that when my cat knocked it off the counter into the bathroom trash, I fished it out, scrubbed it clean, and put it back in my mouth. Gross? Sure, but who has $800 to throw away?

No, they are not. If anything, they seem more expensive...

They can be. My kid needed a new retainer (not because she'd thrown it away) while in college and her orthodontist sold us a set of four identical retainers for $500 or something like that. You can also DIY a retainer where you bite into some clay that then hardens and someone 3D prints it for you. This is how I get night guards for grinding. (I'll note that my most recent one, I had to send it back because it was so loose it fell off my teeth, which would be completely useless as a retainer; the ones fitted by your dentist would fit more reliably, although they're literally made the same way, tooth impression + 3D printing.)

Some of this stuff is kind of a racket. (See also: glasses.)

“…important life lessons, like ‘put things in your mouth that have been in a dumpster and are probably covered in mold, herpes, heroin, and rat poison’, will make sure your parenting is well received and grounded in mutual respect…”

Come on, no one is saying "take the disposable item out of the trash and put it straight in your mouth"; they're saying "take the expensive medical appliance out of the trash, clean and sterilize it the way you always do, which if adequate for the microbes and food particles from your mouth is certainly adequate for whatever got through the paper napkin wrapping, and then use it".

If it’s actually still in the napkin, sure. But the parent (who will know to use gloves and be on the lookout for needles and such) should fish it out, see what it’s been in contact with, evaluate whether it’s recoverable, and come up with some better strategy for the kid to set it aside without losing it again (carry case?) - not encourage the kid to dumpster dive, at least not without a substantial discussion of the hazards of it.

If the kid actually wants to dumpster dive, fine, but would then need to talk the risks over properly first and supervise for safety issues. Shouldn’t be required, anyway.

Again, do we really think people are shooting up at LW's job? And tossing their needles into the communal trash? (If there's some legitimate reason to use needles at the job, the person or the facility presumably has a sharps container.)

Okay, do we really think that the dumpster at this person's job is full of mold, herpes, heroin, and uncontained rat poison?

The safety issue I see isn’t with this dumpster necessarily. It’s with overgeneralizing to the next one, when the kid is 16, out with friends and maybe a little drunk, and makes the bad decision to stick their hand in a dumpster outside the club at 2AM to get some lost unimportant thing, and then winds up in the ER with a much bigger bill than the retainer. I dunno, it just seems like a really risky lesson to send to a kid to mess around with dumpsters.

(Plus, who knows how well the trash company washes out the dumpster after it comes from a worse part of town.)

I liked picking through dumps as a kid but it always earned me a substantial (and disapproving) talk about safety from my parents. Probably saved me some injuries since I knew I was doing something unapproved and could very easily get hurt by hazards.

I think you’re catastrophizing here.

We shouldn’t teach kids how and when to light matches either, because they’ll try to start dumb fires (e.g lighting insecticide to spell initials on grass or lighting booze on fire or just being dumbasses) when they are drunk and 16.

Probably best not to let them use public transit because they might jump out the door of a moving bus before it stops.

Driving is right out. Actually sports probably too. Arts and craft iffy (are drunken 16 year olds trustworthy with glue?)

I already said in another comment that it’s fine if the kid wants to, then teach how to do it safely? It sounds like you didn’t understand me or didn’t see that, and are trying to respond to a point that I’m not making.

None of those situations you mention are comparable because this is a punishment - the only point is of punishment is to get compliance through fear - which isn’t a good strategy in the first place - and/or out of ego or sadism, though presumably not in this case. So, this has a very high bar to clear for safety, as it’s a fundamentally worthless activity for the kid, where nothing is lost by having the parent do it instead.

Unlike sports, art, using matches, driving, willingly dumpster driving for fun, or heck, underage drinking! Any of those activities could actually be worthwhile, fun, interesting, or enriching in some way, and so they might balance out the risks depending on how you weigh them.

It's not clear to me that this is imposed solely as a punishment, though. It could just be a consequence: retainers are expensive, so needs to be reclaimed; and it makes sense for the person who threw it out to get the responsibility of retrieving it.

(If we want to go to extremes, mom doing the dumpster diving for her has the possibility of the daughter growing up to be someone who runs to mommy to fix her mistakes for her, and never experiences consequences. Which isn't great.)

And we don't know that they /didn't/ have discussions about hazards and safety, that the daughter /didn't/ use gloves, etc. We also don't know if mom has done dumpster diving in the past on her daughter's behalf.

> None of those situations you mention are comparable because this is a punishment

No it is not. It is not a punishment, no more than it is a "punishment" to expect that same child to sweep the floor if she spills a bowl of popcorn all over it or to wipe the toilet seat if she pees on it a little.

At 12, Carrie should be old enough to remember her retainer after having to dumpster dive once or twice. Since it's happened more often than that, an evaluation for ADHD may be in order.

The easiest solution may be don't wrap that retainer in a napkin at all. The embarrassment of a visible retainer on the lunch table has to be better than the dumpster diving to retrieve it. Or, if it's possible and the orthodontist approves, switch to wearing her retainer at night.

Back when I wore a retainer during the day, wrapping the thing had little to do with embarrassment. For me, it was about perceived cleanliness — I felt that being too exposed to air or whatever it touched, especially while probably still being a bit wet/damp from my mouth would attract too much dirt, especially on a particularly dry or windy day (but yes, I'd prefer this to dumpster-diving). Well, I also rarely sat at an actual table, so there was never a stable place to put it that wasn't just the ground.

Mine never ended up in the trash though, since it was so chunky that I'd easily feel it through the tissue, but more relevantly, I also didn't tend to throw anything away while at school — everything would go back into my bag (most certainly fruit/veggie scraps so we could compost them, as only my primary school had a composter) to be dealt with at home unless it was especially messy. I think that habit mostly came from sitting Nowhere Near A Bin, but I'm not sure at this point.

Of course, I don't expect anyone to hold onto their trash for any extended period of time (definitely not if they'd forget to take it out later), but a child who accidentally throws their retainer out frequently and may not find a proper container to be helpful may benefit from an adjustment to the "finish food, throw all bits and bobs out" schedule.

There are some kids for whom a retainer is dealing with very important medical issues and it's essential that they have one at all times. For those kids, you need to come up with a way to ensure it's not lost (though, tbh, for those kids, many of them will have appliances that they don't remove while eating during the period where it's truly essential.)

The majority of kids who wear retainers won't suffer serious medical consequences for not wearing it. Most of the kids I knew with retainers who were the kind of people to do that at all eventually lost them in a way the parents weren't willing to replace (or 'lost' them and just failed to mention it to the parents for long enough that the parents threw up their hands.) The worst medical consequences any of them suffered was having to pay their own money/insurance for Invisalign as adults if they decided it was worth it. (Generally, the kids who have been made aware that if they don't wear it they will need another round of oral surgery or whatever, to point up how serious it is, will be better at keeping track of it even if they're adhd or something, because it's more worth spending spoons on at that point.)

So, yeah. If it's not the first time, the solution here, unless the kid is facing actually serious medical consequences, is to give the kid the option of digging it out themself, or of going without until their next appointment and facing down the dentist. The parent should, however, be helping and supervising while they do it. (The reason the parent can't just do it themself - consequences aside - is that the kid will be faster and better, they will have more clues as to which bag it's in, etc.)

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