How do you handle this?

prisonerofcs said:
Just so you know, if you get pulled over and tell the cops that, unless you have a written prescription from your doctor telling you to crush your pills, its still illegal. Technically, if you use your prescription in any way other than the direction on the bottle, its illegal.

Also, anti-depressants are time release, and are designed to slowly release chemicals over 12 or 24 hours, if you crush it your defeating the purpose. If you can't swallow the pills, talk to your doctor he might have another option.
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Interesting........I dont carry my medication and keep it at home so I dont need to worry about that.

I dont actually take it for depression , its for insomnia and unfortunetely they dont make it in small quantities that I take .

But thanks for the info.
 
Back when I first started doing this it was very common to find those little brown bottles of blow in ppl's cars

Today, I'm still finding brown bottles, hydrocodone, xanax, valium, yada yada....Now drug addiction has gone legit

My feelings are to just keep your mouth shut and wash the damn car. I never signed on to be someones drug counseler

My question to those who say they would call the owner and have them come retrieve the car and never come back:

What if this customer has a S65, Gallardo, Bentley and Escalade and has given you keys and full access to care for his toys and pays very well. Would you still be inclined to tell them to stick it?

The only way I'm calling anyone is if I find child porn, terrorist material or a crime scene (unexplained blood)

If someone wants to go puff a crack rock thats their business. Knock yourself out as long as your check clears
 
Flash Gordon said:
Back when I first started doing this it was very common to find those little brown bottles of blow in ppl's cars

Today, I'm still finding brown bottles, hydrocodone, xanax, valium, yada yada....Now drug addiction has gone legit

My feelings are to just keep your mouth shut and wash the damn car. I never signed on to be someones drug counseler

My question to those who say they would call the owner and have them come retrieve the car and never come back:

What if this customer has a S65, Gallardo, Bentley and Escalade and has given you keys and full access to care for his toys and pays very well. Would you still be inclined to tell them to stick it?

The only way I'm calling anyone is if I find child porn, terrorist material or a crime scene (unexplained blood)
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this. if I were to find drugs, I didn't see anything... I wouldn't put myself in the position to judge someone to their face and potentially put myself in a bad spot


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I would just be too bussy . you don't need the problems that come from the Drug World . Next thing your shop gets broken in to or the D E A is watching you .
 
I think the dea has larger issues than a detailer finding small amounts of street drugs in a car and not saying anything. and good luck even proving that you saw it there... it's not like youre slinging it out of your shop.


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fairlady350z said:
I think the dea has larger issues than a detailer finding small amounts of street drugs in a car and not saying anything. and good luck even proving that you saw it there... it's not like youre slinging it out of your shop.


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Another thought....

Say you call the police on some high roller. How are you even sure you will not be the one going to the grey bar hotel? All the owner has to say...no...all the owner has to do is have his/her high powered attorney tell the police it wasn't his clients drugs..... The detailer was the last one with possesion of the car :eek:

Who are they going to believe. Mr High Roller or the Car Wash Guy?

Nahh, I think I'll just leave the stuff where it was and keep movin :p
 
I have had this happen many times when I was a mechanic. I found everything from drugs to loaded handguns in customers cars. The way my dealership handled it was to stop work on the vehicle, pull it out of the shop ,call the customer and tell them what you have discovered and tell them if they don't come and immediately remove the "whatever" from the vehicle we would call the police.

Me personally, I would call the cops, especially if they have a car seat in the car.
 
Flash Gordon said:
Back when I first started doing this it was very common to find those little brown bottles of blow in ppl's cars

Today, I'm still finding brown bottles, hydrocodone, xanax, valium, yada yada....Now drug addiction has gone legit

My feelings are to just keep your mouth shut and wash the damn car. I never signed on to be someones drug counseler

My question to those who say they would call the owner and have them come retrieve the car and never come back:

What if this customer has a S65, Gallardo, Bentley and Escalade and has given you keys and full access to care for his toys and pays very well. Would you still be inclined to tell them to stick it?

The only way I'm calling anyone is if I find child porn, terrorist material or a crime scene (unexplained blood)

If someone wants to go puff a crack rock thats their business. Knock yourself out as long as your check clears
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Gotta agree with you:xyxthumbs:
 
Gonna take a different path here...

Doing an interior, found a half full sandwich baggie of 'white powder' under the pass seat. Due to the fact I knew/know the owner well, I just asked, "WTF?'. Come to find out it was BAKING SODA! He kept an open bag of the stuff to keep the inside of his care from smelling. Just like you'd use in the refrig.

Bill
 
This is a difficult question to answer considering the situations all the possible ramifications.

If it were a small amount of pot, I'd probably put it back where I found it. If it were something stronger I'd give the owner a call and give them the choice of stopping by and picking up the dope and I'd finish the job or coming by and picking up the car.
 
Last year about this time I detailed a Tahoe for a kid coming home from TCU .. Yep the Christian Univ! Car was thrashed, smelled like rank beer had been left for months, food, trash and yes a baggie 1/16 of an ounce of Coke. I know it was a "teener" as I showed a pic to a friend who had experimented with drugs before.
I found the teener under a floor mat as I was vacuuming and immediately stopped... What should I do? Pick it up, throw it away, give it back??? My first reaction was "this dumb ass kid has been riding around with this for who knows how long he could have gotten busted"
So I decided to pick it up and put it in the back pocket of the passenger chair.. I did and continues vacuuming.
As I did so I remembered him telling me that his Dad was a prominent attorney here in town ( and their home was easily $1mm+) and I kept thinking this dumb ass i going to get caught one day and when they catch him hes going to say THATS NOT MINE, then Daddy will get some fingerprints done and see mine and blame me! Ahhhhhelllllno!
So I take the baggie back out, clean off any prints, put on my black nitrile gloves I use with chemicals and I hand it over to him.
I tell him, hey man it's none of my business but I found this under a mat and better me to find it than a cop. He says, thanks bro and with a smile and laugh he says whooohoooo and runs back in his house ... I'm saying to myself this sorry motherlessgoat!
The way I see it is it's none of my business what they do so long as I do what I was paid to do, now being that this was a baggie with some cocaine in it Im sure I'm taking this not so personal but had this been a needle I Definately would say something and say it loud.
So as I'm writing this I think when a customer hands over their keys I might say something cute like cops do "any guns grenades or bombs in your car" but I'll add "any guns,grenades, bombs, drugs or needles in your car?"
Happy Detailing folks!
 
My cousin owns a custom trim shop and finds stuff all the time.

If this ever happened to me I would take his approach. He pulls the car out of his shop, locks it up and tells the owner that they forgot something in their car that needs to be removed before he can continue the work. He said he has done this at least 50 times over the last 20 years and has never lost a customer because of it.

This is also why he uses thick gloves when he first cleans out a car before he starts any work.
 
BillE said:
Gonna take a different path here...

Doing an interior, found a half full sandwich baggie of 'white powder' under the pass seat. Due to the fact I knew/know the owner well, I just asked, "WTF?'. Come to find out it was BAKING SODA! He kept an open bag of the stuff to keep the inside of his care from smelling. Just like you'd use in the refrig.

Bill
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This is exactly the scereio I was talking about! Not all white powder is drugs . Some people use laundry mats also and carry their laundry soap in a baggy .

Wouldnt you feel terribly bad if you called the cops on someone for something that wasnt even drugs.(talking to the people who would call the cops not you Bill)
 
buddhadog said:
This is exactly the scereio I was talking about! Not all white powder is drugs . Some people use laundry mats also and carry their laundry soap in a baggy .

Wouldnt you feel terribly bad if you called the cops on someone for something that wasnt even drugs.(talking to the people who would call the cops not you Bill)
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but how about when the op said that he found a pipe with a residue on it? and you can tell the different between baking soda/laundry detergent and cocaine...


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fairlady350z said:
but how about when the op said that he found a pipe with a residue on it? and you can tell the different between baking soda/laundry detergent and cocaine...


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Yea, white stuff, plus a pipe next to it doesn't take Perry Mason to figure out whats up...
 
fairlady350z said:
but how about when the op said that he found a pipe with a residue on it? and you can tell the different between baking soda/laundry detergent and cocaine...


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Yes in the case of the OP it was drugs. And he had the heart to talk with the customer about it honestly whitch I thought was a lot kinder and wiser than just calling the cops.

I wouldnt know the difference between the powders of laundry detergent (they are all different you know)and cocaine personally . I havent seen meth or cocaine i n 30 years so its a little hard to recall and Im sure times have changed.

Well everyone has got to do what they feel comfortable with but there may be very unpleasant conseqences with turning in a drug user . Some of then are pretty wacked out .
 
This has been a very interesting thread... I must say when I was working for a dealership we were required to call the cops... I know that I personally would not call the cops unless it was a huge amount of "product" or a firearm (I have a felony from a stupid thing years ago so technically I can't even be around either thing)...

I like the idea of Yellow06GT's cousin! That is great I think I will use that if it is ok...

I have run into a lot of diabetic needles (all capped) so that doesn't bother me at all... I have been doing this for a while so I do use a very careful hand when reaching into places I can't see...

I know that the meth was meth... I tried it once in my pot head days (hence the felony) and it made me so sick it was disgusting... I have never touched the stuff again...

As far as finding the pot as I said I just didn't clean out that area of the vehicle... First not knowing if they were a medical user or otherwise ... If they are medi and I accidentally vacuumed it up that would be a theft charge (felony as it is a controlled substance) and if I am not mistaken with how jacked up the CS laws are here in CO if I even move it I can catch a charge of "tampering"... Not worth my while...

As far as the meth... I would not have called the cops if I were going to do anything thinking in hindsight I would have printed a rehab center's number and added it to my thank you packet (a few post cards that have info on how to properly care for the freshly detailed vehicle, a referral card, and a thank you card that had the next suggested maintainece cleaning date on it)... But that could have been "offensive" to them also...

I have a friend that builds custom suspension set ups for low riders and I could do what he does when he runs across a pipe... He crushes it unless it smells like refer... Then he puts it in a little plastic bag and puts that back where the pipe was... (he works in the "ghetto" of Denver called Five Points this area is huge for meth, gangs, and guns)... He is such a respected member of the low rider community that he gets no flak for doing this...

Thanks again for all of the input!
 
Given the nature of drug users and dealers it might not be wise to let the owner now that you know. May be put it back finish the job and keep quiet.
And get paid in cash.

Child porn is another story. Call the cops without advising him. Let him explain it to the cops.
 
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