Our plan didn't work out as well as we had expected; we ran into a few problems from the very beginning.
There is a shorter version of the story at the bottom of this thread if you don't want to read the whole thing.
First, we went to the Wendy's by the mall. When we got there, there was a Wendy's delivery truck, so we had to move on to the downtown location. We sat in the parking lot for a few minutes, discussing exactly how to get into that dumpster. As soon as we got out of the van and started walking over to it, the delivery truck started pulling into the parking lot. We changed direction and headed back into the van.
We arrived back at the mall location, parked at a nearby apartment complex, jumped a fence, and started walking towards the dumpster. There was already a diver in there, and we weren't sure if he was actually some random dude or an employee cleaning up, so we pretended to be residents of the apartment and said we were just suspicious. He gave us tips on how to find cups and then ran off. I think we made him nervous. So we jumped in.
Andrew was the digger in the dumpster, and Howard and I were the searchers ouside the dumpster. After separating around 30 cups from bags of mush, Andrew told us that there were no more bags that he could see with cups. So we decided to head back to the downtown location.
There was a van there with a blinking yellow light, and we were afraid that it might be security. we drove around slowly in nearby parking lots until it drove off. I told Andrew that our driving around was going to be suspicious, but he did it anyway. We parked across the street in the Hospital Supplies Warehouse parking lot. I put on my rubber gloves, put a flashlight in my pocket, and we were off.
As we were about to cross the street, I heard Andrew whisper, "It's a cop.." We waited for him to pass so we could cross. But he didn't. He stopped in the middle of the road and got out of his car.
"What're you guys doin'?"
"Just walking to Kroger."
"Why did you park over there?"
"I...just thought it would be..closer."
"You what? Why would you park all the way across the street to go to kroger?"
"I don't know. I just figured it would be easier."
I felt obvoius with yellow rubber gloves on, so i put my hands in my pockets, a nervous habit I have. He immediately told me to take them out. Two more cops pulled up. Howard and I were separated from Andrew while two of them took him to question him and search his van. Our cop just asked us what we were doing ("going to kroger."), got our names, and looked like my old gym teacher. We all thought that there was one car for each of us to be hauled off to jail. The cops with Andrew finally brought him back and spoke to the gym teacher cop.
"What did they say they were doing?"
"Going to Kroger."
"You guys still stickin' to that story? You know what they were doing? Dumpster diving. If you get so many Wendy's cups, you get a free plane ticket." To us: "Get out of here."
After talking to Andrew during our drive home, I found out that they thought we were trying to steal stuff because we were driving around and all dressed in dark clothes. He didn't believe the Wendy's story until Andrew showed him our other cups from the first stop. We were thankful that we didn't get in trouble, but we ended up with only about 30 cups, didn't get a chance for pictures or video (sorry, cheif), and I got to bed at 4:30.
Short versioin:
The first Wendy's had a delivery truck, so we went to another. A truck pulled in just as we got out of our van, so we went back to the first. We collected about 30 with little to no problems, and headed back to the other location. After driving around and looking suspicious, we got stopped by three cops who questioned us and searched the van. Although we didn't get into any trouble, we decided that they'd probably be checking out the other Wendy's locations, so we went home with only about 30 cups, and I got to bed at around 4:30.
I will probably have to divide our cups because they helped, but now I'm a little closer to Massachusetts!