Judge John Hodgman on Inspecting Your Wife’s Garbage

[conuly]

Sherry writes: If I put a small shopping bag in our kitchen trash can, my husband will often take it out and search it to make sure I haven’t thrown away any receipts (he thinks they should all be shredded) or something salvageable. I believe he should trust in my ability to determine what is trash and what is not. Please order him to stop.

At best, he thinks you’re too dumb to throw out trash correctly, which is merely insulting. At worst, he’s policing not merely your garbage habits but also your actual purchases, which is gross and controlling. I’m sure he’ll deny this part, but he’s the one whose head is in the trash semi-literally digging up dirt on you. What does he think it looks like? I order him to leave your junk alone. But if he won’t, tell him you have nothing to hide and prove it by dumping your trash on his side of the bed every night so he can sort and shred to his satisfaction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/magazine/judge-john-hodgman-on-inspecting-your-wifes-garbage.html

Comments

[ioplokon]

I mean, if she uses a card, there's a record of it anyway?

I thought maybe he wanted to save them for budgeting (bc I've done the "obsessive tracking of spending" thing when money is really tight).... but even then, you kinda have to agree as a household to your budgeting strategy & trust people to follow it. Not dig thru the trash!!

[melannen]

The "shredded" implies he thinks it's a security issue - that someone else might go through the trash, and a receipt will either let them steal credit card numbers/identity info or find out other things about their lives. (More likely the identity theft thing; 'they're tracking our movements via our garbage' verges on clinical paranoia unless he has an actual reason to think the FBI is on his tail.)

Which - "Do receipts need to be shredded?" is one of those things that could be an honest difference of opinion between two people. It's mostly safe, but most of us are careful about less risky things every day. ("How much stuff is salvageable" can also be an honest difference of opinion. Some people re-use the takeout trays, some don't. Etc.) (And if he's used to double-checking all his own trash for receipts or things tossed mistakenly, he might automatically do it to hers too as an "I am helping with trash" thing because you always double-check that, right, rather than an "I do not trust you" thing.)

But I feel like "come to an accord on what is trash" is one of those things that you ought to have figured out how to communicate about before a wedding, really.

[nonethefewer]

There's insufficient PII on a receipt to be of much use. By the time a malicious actor is digging through your trash to get information, receipts are the last thing on their mind. (Shredding credit card offers and health-related mail, though: yes, definitely.)

[melannen]

In theory that's true: in practice i know for a fact the library where I work put full card numbers and names on receipts until relatively recently, and it's always possible there's a small local store with an ancient cash register they've set up wrong. (And there have been cases where law enforcement got a warrant for trash and used receipts to build a picture of a person's movements, though these days it's much more likely to be dna from trash.) If I use my debit card they have the last x digits of my atm number, and that + name and address and phone number (which someone will know from where the can is) can be enough if you're super paranoid about it. I've also heard (probably untrue) rumors of people bin-diving for receipts to use for fraudulent returns, and I know people who shred all receipts and any mail with full name and address.

Like, the odds are super low anyone cares, but they're probably about the same as the odds someone will care that I got a zpak for strep last month, yet you took all medical mail needing shredded on faith. I'm not saying he's right, I'm saying it's the sort of thing they could reasonably have a good-faith difference of opinion on without anyone being abusive or mentally ill.