So this drunk guy passed out on my lawn Fri. night

I went out to walk the dog yesterday morning, found a cell phone in the front yard. Our yard is at a very busy intersection next to a bus stop, but it's also on a hill and thus doesn't get much foot traffic. I determined it didn't belong to any of us or our friends, then looked for an entry for "mom", "dad", "home" etc. Called both mom and dad, who didn't know how to reach the person. Then it rang, and it was a friend of the person who was actually looking for the phone. Finally heard from the guy today, he was really appreciative I found the phone and got in touch with people to try to find him. He was REALLY appreciative. Like, so much so that when he came to pick it up, he brought me a giant bouquet of lovely white daisies. :o :D

My question is this: Who DOESN'T do this if they find a phone? This guy was like...falling all over himself thanking me, saying there was some "really excellent karma coming your way". It just kinda surprised me. I mean if someone did the same for me I'd certainly appreciate it....but are people in general such staggering shitheads these days that something as basic as this deserves prolific thanks and even flowers? :shrug:

It's really sad. :hi:


:yourock:

Man, how depressing. x(

How's Merry Ol' treatin' ya? ;) :hi:

But it's 2am and I'm wide awake. x(

It's a bitch, ain't it? ;)

Hope you don't have to work tomorrow. :(

I thought about it in advance, and never fancied my chances about working tomorrow. I was right. :D

http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=12255

If you have like 75 days to kill, you can read the blog as the saga unfolds.

abridged version:
http://www.evanwashere.com/StolenSidekick/

:o

Now THAT's impressive! :D

Yikes!

and won't return something that's found, thinking, like a republican, "If I found it, it's mine!" or "If they could afford to lose it, they can afford not to have it again!" or some other bullshit.

It's really awful.

I've returned cell phones, wallets, and purses. I don't keep things that I find if there is any way to find the person who owned it.

Unfortunately, I think I'm in the vast minority. But then, you can see this in movie theaters with people who won't shut up or wear perfume or eat loudly; in driving, with impatient honking and assholery; refusal to return carts to the corrals at the shopping centers; refusal to not block aisles and traffic flow inside stores; talking on cell phones while dealing with store clerks, bank clerks, or other people.

:D

I don't want my car getting scratched by one of those things because someasshole couldn't be bothered to walk a few feet. I want someone from the local media to show up with a camera and confront people who don't put their carts away. Put them on the six o'clock news. "ANd why didn't you put your cart away? It's only a few feet. Now all your neighbors know what a lazy asshole you are". I guess they couldn't say asshole though.

At my grocery store, the parking lot is sloped for drainage so when the wind blows, it blows all the carts into the cars parked there.

I think there needs to be a deposit for shopping carts. It has to be big enough so people would return their carts to get their money back. Maybe 10 dollars. Somebody told that in Europe they do that.

I was at one grocery store (I can't remember where it was now) where you could not remove the carts from in front of the store. There were concrete barriers placed in such a way as to not allow the carts to get through. You had to pull your car up. I have no idea how this would work if you were alone though. I think the deposit idea is better.

being stuck in close proximity with some idiot perfume-wearer is hell; sometimes making us need to move and go elsewhere; sometimes just to leave.

Of course, those who wear it sensibly - just a little bitty touch that can only be smelled within an inch or two of the body - are fine.

But too many women, and some men, think that if a little is good, then a lot must be really good. Those people are assholes.

I like to wear perfume but I know I don't overload it and I have never had any complaints.

I have had the misfortune of sitting next to a stranger with the worst BO in a movie theater. Damn theater filled up too so I couldn't move :-(

Ewwwwwwww...

:scared::scared::scared::scared::scared:

2 weeks ago and turned it in to customer service. I ABHOR stealing, and fully believe in karma. Not to mention: It's the right thing to do.

Nice username, btw. :D :thumbsup:

I turned it into the manager. The person who lost it was lucky that it was me who found it. Someone else might not have been so honest.

while in college, during senior week (the week after finals, but before graduation - when everyone is partying each day to celebrate) - I stayed out with friends until early in the morning (hey - I was 21 - and about to graduate.. give me a break...) - when I got home the side outside door (that went into my bedroom) - had a shattered window. Glass and cement (from the block from the road that the guy threw through the window to get in...) all over. My roomate wasn't home yet either, as I gathered my courage to walk in and figure out what had happened.

I go into the apt and into my bedroom and there is a drunk guy - in my bed - sleeping in a pile of vomit (in my bed! Ugh!)

This was also the day of the senior canoe trip - folks were gathering in a couple of hours... and I really didn't want this drunk to f*ck up my senior week. Called the police and the landlord. There was a lady next door, who 'wanted to stay out of it' (she was having an affair with the guy next door and wanted that fact kept secret) - but saw the dude in my bed knocking on all of the windows before hearing a crash. Got the police and the landlord out by 8 am. Landlord was going to replace the window with plexiglass and told me it was okay to leave. (After the police got the guy out - and I cleaned up the disgusting vomit) - and I guess the only happy ending was that I at least got to the canoe trip in time.

Aye - what a memory.

That's horrible. x(

Someone broke into our apartment once and stole our $9 Walgreens phone, my jewlery box, the stereo REMOTE (!!) and our shampoo (!!!).

I mean someone doesn't just happen upon your shampoo - they have to peek around in the bathroom to find it. The jewelry box I can understand (yikes and ugh!) - but wtf were they going to do with a stereo remote without the stereo?

They had "stereo AND remote" in there. It probably didn't even register that someone would only take the remote. :D

But yeah, the shampoo was definitely creepy. Ew.

by the cops onto my front lawn. Apparently the perp had tried to break into a neighbor's basement while they were not home.

I was blithely walking into the living room with a cocktail (it was a summer Saturday evening) and damn near dropped my jaw. This was about 10 years ago. YIKES!!! The cops had their guns drawn and the guy down on the grass with said pieces pointed at him.

:D

and I was home alone.

It was only the third time in my life that I had seen cops with guns drawn...now four.

First time I was late teens and with parents in the car...I hit the backseat floor. Another time was at O'Hare. The third time I have related. Fourth was when a neighborhood bank was being robbed...and the cops made us go through a red light. :D

All were creepy.

This was about a year and a half ago. I'm walking over to my friends house and I hear and see a cell phone ringing in the lawn of the YMCA directly across from his house. It's stopped ringing by the time I get over to it. I pick it up and try calling the person back (Mom) but it's going to voicemail. I go inside the YMCA and there's no one at the desk. So, I head over to his house and after a couple more tries, I get "Mom" on the phone. I tell her that I found her kid's cell phone on the lawn of the YMCA. She immediately starts screaming and cursing at me that I'm trying to steal the phone. I try telling her that I'm not stealing the phone (if I was going to steal it, would I have called "Mom?") and she keeps going off on a tirade about how she's gonna call the cops on me. I'm just like, "hey, I'm going to drop it off at the Y right now. The phone will be at their desk in two minutes." She continues on about how she's going down to the Y and if the phone's not there she's pressing charges etc (on who? Me? She didn't know who I was)."

The woman was totally nuts. I feel sorry for her kid. He probably got beat or something for dropping his phone.

:wtf:

That poor kid! x(

it so he could escape her clutches!

How could she press charges anyway? How would she know who you were? :crazy:

My friend was sitting on the couch violently shaking, because he didn't want to break out into hysterical laughter. I was holding the phone like a foot away from my ear.

Yeah, there's no way she could press charges and it also makes absolutely no sense that I would call her up to say I found the phone, if I was going to steal it. After I dropped it off at the Y (there was somone at the next when I went back), I was almost tempted to stick around to see what she looked like. I didn't though, because she'd probably think anyone around her was going to mug her and steal the phone or something.

I just feel really bad for the kid that lost his phone with that bitch mother.

Cool.

;)

He actually goes out of his way to try to get me to drink sometimes. It's pretty astounding the tenacity with which he tries to get me to drink.But passing out on a stranger's lawn and losing his phone is definitely something I can see him doing.

Whoever it was who found my Treo on Metro-North on February 12, for one!

Those babies ain't cheap. :(

I'd have returned it if I found it, if that helps. :D :hi:

no i'm not gonna call nine hundred different numbers and chat w. mom, dad, friend, and finally the drunk himself just to return a cell phone, sorry

if that makes me shitty so be it, life is too short

pass out drunk on my lawn and all you will get is a free trip downtown

who DOESN'T do this if they find a phone? people who have a life, that's who! there are 24 hours in the day, i will no longer devote them to cleaning up after sloppy drunks

if that's cold, so be it

when the phone was lost. I didn't find them, only the phone and that was next day.

And it took all of probably 10 minutes of my life total between the different phone calls to find someone and get the phone returned.

:eyes:

Yeah... that's pretty shitty.

be serious, like all ya'll have nothing better to do than call a bunch of numbers of people you don't know and talk to them on the phone

nope

not gonna happen

i don't even call people i do know on the phone unless it's very very important, that's why god and mr. gore invented email

i am not obligated to drop everything that is going on in my life because a drunk loses a phone

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I think life is too short to worry about 5 minutes of your time more than the idea of someone losing their contacts, their property, and possibly hours of time searching. I think life is too short to be so worried about your time you become obsessed with it.

and i'm not going to talk on a phone to enable a drunk i don't even know

enabling drunks is not really so kind as you guys imagine anyway but i won't interfere further with the self-appointed back patting :eyes:

:rofl:

Enabling a drunk isn't limited to giving a drunk a drink, or a lift to the bar, or falsely reassuring him that he wasn't a drunk. Enabling drunks absolutely includes returning stuff people have lost, assuming the person who lost the item was a drunk, or was likely to become one in the future. In fact, I firmly believe that everyone who ever loses something should undergo a background check and blood test for chemical dependency before they're deemed worthy of having it back.

how does one become 'a drunk', and not just 'drunk'?

sort of like the informal 'the'

For instance, if one abides AA's assertion that alcoholism is a disease, then one could fairly be said to "have the drunk."

you could just say "Sir, I will not return your property. You have the drunk, and I am contemptuous of diseased persons, and will not enable the drunk."

:D

"...will not enable a the drunk" is also acceptable syntax. But we're getting bogged down in a semantics tangent. The fact remains that anyone who ties one on forfeits his or her property rights. It's just basic etiquette.

Or, also anyone who could be suspected of tying one on. Which could be anyone who leaves anything anywhere that you find, if you don't happen to witness the leaving of said thing.

Glad this is all cleared up.

Now on to numerical troubles. 1 + (1 + 1) + 1 = 900. Show your work.

:cry:

let me put it in terms you'll understand:

$1 + ($1 + $1) + $1 = $900

Now I get it.

I wrote the *book* on kvetching. And predatory interest.

Believe me, it ain't pretty.

:D

You know, the Golden Rule that's so highly touted by the world's religions: Treat others like YOU would like to be treated. But that's so passé anymore.

If someone loses something, I try to make at least a small effort to get it back to them. It's kind of like how I wish someone would do the same for me, regardless of my reason for losing it. But then I guess I expect too much, seeing as how we clearly live in a culture of a$$holes.

Look upthread, it should become clear that I'm poking at someone who rather vigorously and unsportingly said s/he wouldn't return an item by exaggerating his/her position to a ridiculous extreme. I'm in full agreement with you. I just prefer a different rhetorical route to expressing it.

:hi:

I was just sort of adding on to what you were saying, in my own incompetent way. :hi:

It was so straightforward, I thought you'd misread me and were commenting accordingly. Looks like *I'm* the one who could use the comprehension refresher! :blush:

"spitoon"!

:rofl:

"Life is too short..." What a bunch of shit. It'll take you a couple minutes to make a call. How many times have you wasted a couple minutes of your life? Oh, sorry to bring up the reality that I can almost guarantee that you haven't spent every bit of your life 100 Percent devoted towards worthy and lofty goals.

And you know what, you never know what will come of your returning the phone. Might be the best thing to ever happen to you.

If you're too lazy and indifferent, just say so, don't try to make up excuses.

You're too important to take the time to make a couple of calls on speed dial...

But you're beneficient enough to take time out of your busy schedule to argue on an internet message board about how you're too busy to make a couple of phone calls?

Huh.

i'm positive that i have better things to do than hunt down drunks who pass out on my front lawn

DAYUM, your science be TIGHT! :thumbsup:

about how you refuse to waste any time in your precious life helping someone else, perhaps?

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

something someone has lost, which is very despicable and cold-hearted of you. I'm sure if you lost your cellphone/wallet/whatever you would want it returned, wouldn't you?

It's just an observation. I imagine there occasional flashes of generosity of spirit, but none that I've actually seen.

Such as in how a person's story is "Made up" because she is the grand high poobah of what is truthiness on the internets. ;) :hi:

<EXPLETIVE DELETED>

To have the insight that every scientific study ever produced is wrong, that everybody is wrong, must be a great burden to bear. Many probably couldn't handle the stress. The poor thing.

:rofl: :yourock:

Hell, as far as you know, it could have been a DRUNK who left it there! :eyes:

At least you are consistent.

I mean, I'm sure it's true. I'm sure you'd do that.

I just don't think it's very honest.

Or wallet, keys, etc. Everyone else I would make every attempt to return their property to them. It's the right thing to do in a civilized society.

place. And that while it once was surprising or rare to find an unethical cad of a human being, it's now surprising or rare to find someone who isn't a blatant poopyhead.

I'd still be surprised to meet someone who was enough of a douchebag not make a phone call or two to return someone's cell phone. ;)

But not long ago I had occassion to renew some important documents. The State of Washington's policy is to return the new documents 2 weeks later by mail. My documents never arrived and when I researched them, I found they'd been mailed to an address one digit off. So, I know where they went. The State knows where they went. And since I filed an 'Affadavit of Lost Mail" the Federal Govenment and the U.S. Postal Service know where they went. Given the nature of the documents, possibly even Homeland Security know where they went.

The bastard at the other address never returned them. All that was required was to write "not at this address" on the envelope and the State would pick up the postage for return and hold them in Olympia for me to claim; but no.

As shocked and disappointed as I was, most of the people involved in my documentation renewal were particularly unsurprised to hear this. They pretty much shrugged it off as fairly commonplace.

:eyes:

i have sometimes got the same piece of mis-addressed mail delivered to me several times

writing "not at this address" is simply ignored, they keep returning it to this address

what (i hope) works is completely blacking out the wrong address which forces the postal service to return to sender, at least i hope they return to sender, i have no control over it, but at least they stop delivering it to ME

for all you really know your mail is at the dead letter office even as we speak

oh and if there is a UPC like code at the bottom of the letter, black that out too, or it will still keep being delivered back to you, they don't read "he's dead, jim" or "no such person" they just have a scanny thing that gets the (wrong) address out of that code apparently

a) Quite incorrectly presumptive of my ignorance. I know, I know, the baby-face gets them every time. But really...I'm not as dumb as I look.

b) A misunderstanding of the 'Affadavit of Lost Mail,' it's process and result.

c) A rationalisation for irresponsible and unethical behaviour.

events of this weekend in which I was on the wrong end of two, not just one, bits of dishonesty by strangers within five minutes of each other.

Neither one a big deal, but it really annoyed me.

My best friend and I went to Niagara Falls, N.Y. for the weekend to celebrate my birthday by gambling and drinking and revelry at the Seneca Casino.

At one point, we were playing some slot machines and then we left those to go to another section of the casino to play some different machines. We got to the second area, put the card and voucher (at that time, it had only about $25 on it) into the machine, and Linda realized that she had left her cigarettes and lighter at the slot machines we'd just come from. So, we went back to the slot machines where she'd left her things and both of us thought that the other had taken the $25 voucher out of the new machine.

Within 2 minutes, we were back at the spot where she'd left her smokes and lighter and they were gone. Within 4 minutes, we were back at the second machine, and someone had taken the voucher with $25 and change on it.

We checked to see if anyone turned in either.... nope. And the security people said, nonchalantly, that almost nobody ever does.

*Sigh*

But, I'd still not even consider not naking efforts to return someone's property that I found.

... and given you flowers as well! Unfortunately, you're right.... People are such staggering shitheads, and that's what we've come to expect.

:hug:

:D :thumbsup:

:shrug:

We were lucky once. Skip lost his phone once after putting it on top of the car and forgetting it when we drove off. Luckily, he called it and a dude answered, letting us know he had it. We drove back to his home town to get it, and offered to give the guy money. He refused. We kept him from going home with his family by making him wait. He said they were just playing with their daughter in the shade, and we made him stop and enjoy his day. That was enough payment.
But there are a lot of shit heads out there. And they'd find the phone and run up the bill just being shitty. This is the norm.
Duckie

Instead of calling all his family and friends :shrug:

I don't have any friends. :cry:

That's why I didn't answer the phone when Dolo called. Next time you pass out on the front lawn, send the check first.

:D :thumbsup:

Only thou, my fair sweet sundog.

:loveya:

never heard anything. Whoever found it kept it. Of course I let it get locked the second I foun out and was home. So no harm was done except getting all phone numbers again.

Another phone (one I really liked) was stolen. It had insurance but Verizon replaced it with a shitty phone claiming it was the same quality. Bastards!

Maybe he'd lost others in the past that weren't returned.

Not that much time involved to make a couple of phone calls and it is the right thing to do. :thumbsup:

as in "not an asshole" "not a jerk"


Sounds like he learned and was learned well.

Good for you.

It fell out of my pants when I went to drop off my mother. I only had a few bucks to get out of the parking lot, so I did not leave him anything. Another woman actually gave it to me and said who found it. I said maybe I should use the ATM to give him a reward. She gave me some crap about being blessed as a reward and I listened to it. In retrospect I should have given him something.

called the number in it for "mom" and girl came and got it - her purse had been stolen with phone in it.

Do into others....

:woohoo:

that was such a sweet thing to do!

not to mention the right thing.

you deserved the flowers!

i mean i don't know how many people wouldn't return it... but there is that commercial where the guy finds one in the health club and keeps it, so... not that commercials are any indication of reality (hah certainly not!) but still... maybe that's where he got the impression? who knows?

daisies huh?! fabulous! i love daisies :) they look so happy! but my favorites are stargazer lilies because they smell sooo good!

does Lillie's have two 'l's or one? i should do a spell check and find out...

it changed it to a proper name... wtf? stupid spell check!

:D

:kick:

the owners. So the guy dedicated an entire webpage to shaming the phone thiefs. some people just suck.

Besides, it always nice to show gratitude.

and it just disappeared. Ends up, the little old lady seated next to me stole it. She answered when I called and I could tell she was in her car. I thanked her for finding it (though we both know she stole it) and she said she would drive it back. My doubts were confirmed when she never showed up. I called it again, she had the gall to answer. I told her she was a piece of shit thief and she better hope I never see her.:( :-(