Last weekend, I was at Carfax nightclub, and I was having a pretty good time. At some point on the dance floor, I noticed a small glinting object at my feet. When I bent down to have a look, there was a small Nokia phone.
I asked all the people dancing near me if they had dropped it, and none of them had, so I walked outside to discuss this discovery with my friends. We checked the most recently dialled number, which was to someone called Archie, and was at around 11 that evening.
We thought that since Archie was being called so late, chances were that he was also at the party. We called him from the phone, left a message saying we had found it, and that he could call us on it to arrange to collect his friend`s phone.
We also noted that there was an overseas number for "Mom", and a local number for "Dad". If Archie didn`t call us back, we resolved, we`d call Dad tomorrow.
A brief discussion was held about whether we should hand in the phone at the entrance to the club. However, we were mistrustful of whether the phone would be returned to its rightful owner, so we opted to keep it, and contact its owner`s relations the next day.
I don`t want the phone, and I don`t want to give it away, it not being mine in the first place.
Georgina Guedes, editor, ITWeb Brainstorm
This was the first of two dreadful errors. The second was that we didn`t check how much battery life the phone had left. By the next morning, the battery was flat, and we had no record of the numbers we needed to dial to make contact.
And, of course, poor Archie only had a message to call his friend`s phone.
I felt really terrible. We should have left it with the bouncers. We should have written down the contact numbers.
I tried "0000" and "00000" as the PIN numbers, but neither worked. And when I looked at the SIM card, I realised it was a Vodacom 4U card, which is a pay as you go, so there would be no billing information for the owner.
A friend of mine once did a similar thing. Sitting at a bar, she picked up what she thought was her phone and put it in her handbag. A while later, she turned it off to go into a movie. When she got home, she realised she had two phones, and had obviously stolen the one belonging to a stranger sitting next to her in the bar. It was also a pay as you go, which meant there was nothing she could do about it.
I don`t want the phone, and I don`t want to give it away, it not being mine in the first place. So if anyone out there knows an Archie, who was at Carfax on Saturday night, who has a friend with a Nokia and a father in the country and a mother overseas, drop me a line. I have your friend`s phone.
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