Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
It's funny. Laugh. Technology

Where Has Your Cell Phone Been? 67

Posted by Cliff from the in-the-bottom-of-a-water-filled-pail dept.
RunAmuk chimes in with this off-beat query: "Several of the software packages the company I currently work for sells, are 'critical' applications at our client's sites. As such, we have to have support staff on call 24/7 and the company provides several cell phones for this purpose. These cell phones are rotated through the support staff on a weekly basis, so that everyone gets a chance to share in the joy of the 2am support call. This morning as I overheard the pass-off of the phone ('Sorry about the antenna, my cat was chewing on it') it brought to mind a couple of the other 'incidents' that have occurred where the phone didn't quite make it to the hand-off. I'm sure we aren't the only company to have had amusing incidents like this, does anyone have any good stories to share?"

"Incident 1: A group of us were standing around the front desk after a meeting. The VP walks up (management are supplied with phones as well in case client calls get escalated) and someone says, 'I tried calling you last night but you weren't answering your cell phone.' The VP replies 'Yeah, my dog ate it!' Everyone laughed thinking it was a modern day take on the 'my dog ate my homework' story. Everyone laughed even harder when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a Ziploc bag full of small pieces of electronics and black plastic, handed it to the administrative assistant at the desk and said 'Please order me a new one.' His German Shepard saw the phone sitting on the coffee table and thought it would make a good chew toy.

Incident 2: While waiting for an important call from a client, one of the support guys was carrying the cell phone with him absolutely everywhere. The team leader knew this, and while he was on the phone with another client (on a speakerphone), he was surprised to see this support person come rushing into his cubicle without the cell phone. The team leader looked curiously at the support guy wondering what was going on and got a mumbled response:

'I flmsdd shll fdn dbn tlt.'
'You what?'
'I flushed the cell phone down the toilet!'

A burst of laughter came from the other end of the speakerphone, and the client says 'I think I'll call back later, it sounds like you've got your own problems.'
'How the h**l did you flush the cell phone down the toilet?', the team leader continues.
'Well, I was waiting for that important call to come in, and I had to go to the bathroom so I took the phone with me. When I finished, I stood up and flushed the toilet and heard a "plop". Looking down all I could see was the phone (a StarTac) swirling lower and lower in the bowl, then it was gone.'

The burst of laughter from the surrounding people was nothing compared to the laughter a few minutes later when the support person was crouched with his head over the toilet listening for the phone while the team leader dialed the number. Not being able to hear anything they counted the phone lost, and put in a requisition for a new one.

A couple of weeks later, no one was really surprised when a plumber had to be called in because one of the toilets kept backing up. Half an hour later the plumber left, leaving a tightly sealed bag containing a now black and brown cell phone at the front desk. The phone was proudly(?) displayed in the support person's office for several weeks afterward until one extremely brave co-worker took the phone home, and after a very thorough drying, cleaning and sterilization, replaced the battery and brought the once again working phone back to the office! . . . of course everyone still refused to use it."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Where Has Your Cell Phone Been? More

Where Has Your Cell Phone Been?

Comments Filter:

  • My Phones.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @07:55PM (#6739361)
    Ah... my dear loveable cell phones...

    #1 - Ericsson sh*tbox flip thingy. Faithful to the end.... end of its screwed on ,flimsy belt clip, which snapped, sending the phone plunging into an aquarium.

    #2 - Same as #1, only this one manifested a display glitch whereby you could only read the display if you were squeezing the phone in the right place. Many calls to American Tits & Twats later, I am issued phone #3...

    #3 - Nokia 3360, the apeasement phone ("This guy is gonna ditch us if we dont give him a freebie"). Works fine, for about a week. Then the "No Service Weekends" start - you know, when AT&T service is free... From 8:30pm Friday until about 10 or 11 AM Monday the phone would read "NO SERVICE". No amount of arguing or grumbling would get AT&T to do anthing about it. This phone met an untimely demise at the hands of my car...
    *CRUNCH* Oh my, I think I ran over something.... I will put it in reverse, back up and check....
    *CRUNCH* Oh my, I think I backed over something... I will put it in first, drive forward and check...
    Repeat 10 times, then dust the remnants of said phone into a baggie and dispose.

    This brings us to phone #4 - Nextel i60 - So far still alive. We shall see...
    • Ok, only one story.

      Had one of the old flip phones (Motorola?) in a leather form fitting skin with a belt clip. Not a particularly strong belt clip, but a belt clip.

      I'm hot rodding through a residential neighborhood on my motorcycle when I hit a bump in the road, slow down a little to maintain control and I look down to see the cell phone sliding, tumbling along at 40mph (60kph). Half a block later I pull over, pick it up and -:- the leather case protected it. It worked just fine.

      Now pagers on the othe

  • What sort of company... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by glenstar ( 569572 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @08:11PM (#6739476)
    has to share a cell phone? I was kind of with you when you talked about tech people, but a company where a VP has to share a phone is... well, let's just hope your check clears next week.
    • Reading comprehension lesson:
      (management are supplied with phones as well in case client calls get escalated)

      Where does the article mention at all that the managment was sharing a phone? His company issued phone was trashed.
    • 1. You need a single point of reach. One single number, without some elaborate (and superbly expensive) package from the phone company.

      2. When you don't have the phone you are off the clock. Nobody is trying to reach you.

      3. Clients don't have you personal phone numbers. This way if they cannot reach the on-support guy, they won't try to reach others.

      and so on.
      • We had a system like this at my old job. Once the phone spent a weekend in jail, along with the tech of course.

      • Most companies nowadays maintain some sort of in-house phone system. Meridian, whatnot.

        Most of these allow you to forward a given number on a pre-scheduled basis to another number.

        Anyone who must be reachable at any given time should have their own cell phone, period.

        And if the scheduled call forwarding fails, do what we did--redirect the hotline number (you have one, don't you?) to the mobile of whoever's on call. That way nobody has your direct number, and you have a single point of contact. If you'

    • Ummm (Score:2)

      by phorm ( 591458 )
      One where they want to keep the same number for support, but have a rotating support person?

      It's not really any different from a lot of companies that have a tech-on-call. Sometimes you have rotating tech-support shifts, but if you just pass the phone over at least the numbers that one has to call don't change.
    • has to share a cell phone? I was kind of with you when you talked about tech people, but a company where a VP has to share a phone is... well, let's just hope your check clears next week.

      Seriously... I work in the Auto industry, as a Quality Engineer (basically, a customer support bitch who has some specific skills). My customer is General Motors, several plants in the Detroit area. The company I went to told me that they would not be issuing me a cell phone or pager nor reimbursing me for my Nextel beca
  • What kind of backwater, podunk company doesn't have a rotating on-call list. It isn't 1992 anymore.

    • Re:Share a cell phone? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I wouldn't want my personal (cell) phone number in standby support lists. If the company wants to reach me in the middle of the night, then they pay for the last resemblence of private/work separation.
    • The best solution is to have a portable number. That way you just point the number to a different location each night. I really would not want to bring a phone other people use home. Most portable numbers let you change the destination with call on via the web.

  • I can remember an incident (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sevn ( 12012 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @08:53PM (#6739736) Homepage Journal
    I was working for a company in DC at the time, and we had an "EOC" phone. Engineer on call got passed the phone and had to keep it for a week. We were a 24-7 shop so no matter what shift you worked, you'd get your turn in hell. It was the worst for the monday-friday guys that worked the 4-12 shift because they'd invariably forget they couldn't get loaded on friday and expect to do anything useful early saturday morning. Of course that's when the call would come. 6 or 7am saturday morning. So I had it worse than any of these guys because as their manager, I had to be at work every single day for about 14 hours because I had inherited a HUGE mess from the previous tech manager (two months of redhat and he was a UNIX expert). Against the wishes of just about everyone, someone had put new code into production on a friday. Of course it bombed and completely hosed the backup system, as well as push the load on a very important machine to the point that it was completely unresponsive. So I'm doing my usual drive to work at 6am heading around the beltway. I get a phonecall and I can see it's the EOC phone. I flip the startac open and it's our pissed off, still half drunk EOC telling me that he needs me to put the fear of God into a support guy that refuses to try to use a serial cable to console into the sick machine. So we do a conference call. My EOC is completely pissed and just keeps getting worse. The support guy is complaining that he doesn't understand, and that he can't get ahold of his boss for permission. I explain that it's critical. The EOC is saying that he's driving in and about 30 minutes away and it would be great if he only had to deal with fixing the backups and how important it was to have this customer visible machine back up and running as soon as possible. I'm echoing what the EOC is saying and thinking to myself, yanno, I'm only about 30 minutes away. The EOC keeps getting more and more pissed. About this time a car speeds by me in the outside lane and that's when I hear the crackle on the line and pieces of nokia rain down all over my car. I probably would have been a huge dick about it if I hadn't been listening to the call.

  • I'm going to regret posting this. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Klaruz ( 734 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @08:57PM (#6739765)
    Prett simple story, I had gone to the gym which was accross the parking lot from where I worked on base. I left my cell phone in the back pocket of my gym bag, with my deoderant, in my car. Then I walked to work. Little did I know solid white deoderant melted (see, there's the stupid part). Mix that in with the car windows up on a very hot day and I ended up with a startac filled with nice smelling goo (the car smelled good too). Washing, drying, and even a disasembly attempt were no good. I ended up with a new samsung. I'm just glad the phone was old and it was time for an upgrade anyway.

    Feel free to make fun of me for this, all my friends did.

  • Most of mine end up in the lake (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @08:57PM (#6739767)

    Most of my phones end up in the lake. Fisrt time it was in my pocket when I fell overboard. The canoe was unstable, I realized it was going and jumped before the entire canoe went.. Overall I lost less than if the contents of the canoe went down, but the phone didn't survive.

    Next one I put in a ziplock bag in the waterproof compartment of my jetski, but when I arrived at my destination the phone was wet. Never worked again.

    Yeah I've seen the sites on how to care for a phone that falls overboard, but they didn't work, at least not for me.

    • I went hiking with a friend and my dog, and decided to put the cell in the dog's pack (little pack - she carries her food, water, and mat) so it would be easily accessible if we needed it (I was carrying a hundred pounds in my honkin' internal frame pack that's not so easy to pick up once it's down.)

      Well, let me tell you about Labs and water. We came upon a stream, and in went the dog, pack, and cellphone.

      From now on, she carries only waterproof gear.
  • My phone has gone through hell and back.. and it keeps on going..

    I've...
    Dropped it 2 stories onto the steel deck of a boat MULTIPLE times on different occasions(fell out of pocket as I was leaning over a railing)..
    Dropped it into puddles..
    Exposed it go through chemicals galore..
    Gotten it hooked up on stuff as I ran by(was in my pocket)

    I can't even remember what else I've done to it.. :> Thing still works great, unless you count how quiet it is.. but that's because it lives in my pocket and the sp

  • Just think about this for a minute (if you have females in your group):

    The woman gets called at 2 am. She handles the call and can't go back to sleep. She is single or hubby/bf is either out of town or in deep slumber...
    She tries to go back to sleep and can't. She needs some clitoral stimulation to relax her to go back to sleep. Then she realizes that the batteries of vibrator died. Then she looks around and notices the cell phone in addition to the cordless landline phone. And yeah, THE CELL PHONE HAS VIB

    • Actually (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phorm ( 591458 )
      In the nearby large city, I heard they were having some problems with this. Apparently young couples with cellphones would experiment with the vibe feature, but some actually have the cellphone vibrate itself out of reach.
      Buzzz...oh...oH...OH...pop and it's gone

      Several embarrassed females/couples ended up in hospitals to have a doctor remove "lost" cellphones.

  • I work at a coal mine (Score:5, Funny)

    by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @09:28PM (#6740018) Journal
    So lets see , there's been phones:

    - Run over by 290 ton dump trucks. Phone? What phone?

    - Dropped into various parts of an operating washplant (all ending with at least a 12 inch inlet impellor pump running at 2000RPM waiting for the phone)

    - Dropped down 70 meter boreholes and then subsequently blasted to bits when said boreholes are charged with explosive and fired. (From memory in this case, they dropped about a cubic metre of dirt back down the hole to seperate phone from explosive before charging the hole.)

    Try explaining *those* accidents to your boss.
  • A nice little Motorola. Put through the wash once (I'm sure I'm not the first that's happened to), but it survived. About a month later, I could no longer SMS text - only numbers. I'm not sure if that was related to the wash incident.

    A few months after that, I was stupid and drunk enough to lend the phone to a friend who was drunk and stupid enough to have lost one phone that night already. He managed to get his back the next day.

    I can't claim to really miss my old phone that much. If someone needs to con

  • Scotch (Score:2, Funny)

    by Loops ( 690463 )
    Ive put my poor phone though a fair bit, been dropped off a 2 storey balcony, been swimming in the pool, but it was actually a swim in scotch and coke that killed it in the end :/

  • Wtf? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 )
    What kind of company is this? Don't people take care of their crap? If it had been any place I worked, you'd have had to buy the company a new one. It seems strange to give people rotating cell phones when alpha-pagers would have done the job and cheaper.
    • Hard to hold any kind of conversation on a pager, even a blackberry (and if you going to pay for a RIM, the phone is cheaper).

      With a pager people on the road don't have a way to get back in touch with you. If they have a personal cell, then you have to deal with charge back, if not they have to find a payphone.

      Cell is much more convenient, and saves time in the long run.
  • 1. Dropped off a high rise construction, about 20 stories down.
    2. Ran over by a D9 Cat at same high rise construnction
    3. Two words, washing machine
    4. Left at Olive Garden. Guy that found it did not want to give it back and would argue with anyone that called it.
    5. I now have a pager. Company wont issue me anymore cell phones, and here is the kicker, I WORK for a wireless company!
  • I used to have a Nokia 8290. TINY little phone. I came home from work to change clothes becaus I had been climbing around on rooftops setting up a 802.11b building to building wireless network. So I was in a rush to change/shower and get back to work. I threw me dirty clothes in the dryer and left to work. Once I got back to work and went to search for my cellphone because I used it to keep all my contacts, I realized it was missing. Then I realized where it was! It was probably mid spin cycle at home! So I
  • I have been with my company for over 5 years now. I started when I was 18 as an entry level markup engineer and worked my way up. About a year after I started I moved into a position which required me to be on call (pretty much 24/7). At that time I got a company phone (a Nextel). Upon receiving it, I decided that I didn't want to carry around my personal phone anymore (with the company phone) so I cancelled it and started using my work phone for everything. I had that phone for just over a year (breaking t
    • My previous employer offered me a free cellphone but I declined. They were only going to give me 400 minutes. I have the Get More 3000 plan with t-mobile. It costs me $50 a month and I get 3000 anytime minutes! That's 100 minutes per day! I usually use about 2700 of them.

  • Probably shouldn't mention this... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fuzzybunny ( 112938 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @04:51AM (#6742036) Homepage Journal

    I worked as a consultant for a big big big bank. I was nominally in a team of 4 people--one was busy being a manager, one didn't do f***-all, one was usually too busy with wife & kids (ok I accept that one) and one preferred to spend his time playing with new tech. So, being the only contractor, it fell to me to get shit done.

    Even though we had an on-call rota system, where our landline hotline number was forwarded to the company cell of whoever was on call that week, I inevitably ended up being called in, often very drunk, to fix problems that weren't my problem. Firewall issue? Call the firewall guys. Database issue? Call the firewall guys. Company web server dead? Call the firewall guys. Aunt Edna's refrigerator won't defrost? Call the firewall guys.

    It got to the point where my colleagues would forward calls from the company's _customers_ to me. Once, on top of a very very high mountain, once on another continent, once while getting busy (no I didn't pick it up, but as a helpful tip, always turn off the mobile when you're with your girlfriend. Few things are more of a mood-killer than 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' as a Nokia ringtone when things get hot and heavy.)

    So, finally, one day, I managed to get reservations at the most difficult-to-get-into restaurant in town, and just as we'd ordered our drinks, the fucking phone rings. Support issue from one of the unix idiots, and I'm not even on call. All the other guys are several hundred miles away and can't dial in (including the EOC.) So, I take a few deep breaths, tell the maitre d' we'd be back, and THROW THE FUCKING PHONE AS HARD AS I CAN AND STEP ON IT AND JUMP AND SCREAM INSULTS AT IT argh argh argh! You know the feeling, when things like that just sort of come to a head? That's the one.

    Official version, "a cab ran over it." Despite the footprints on what was left of the display. Nobody ever asked about it, since that would have cost them a lot of goodwill from the only guy willing to drive crosstown at 3 a.m. after several pints to fix their trading system, while not on the call rota.
  • im sure telecom where i work has heard it all since we use over 40,000 pagers. i am not exactly sure about the number of cell phones because they arnt used quite like we use the pagers. A stupid story though im sure is a lot better then people who ruin them by being just flat out wreckless dropping them. I havent done anything horible to my pager or any of my work equipment but i have heard of guys dropping their nerd pack (1 pair of scisors, 1) punch down tool, 1) screw driver, 1) flashlight) in the toilet
  • I do not believe that no one has submitted this yet, but this [geocities.com] should definitely be mentioned. Check Item #3 under "SOME MORE ALSO RAN".
  • I take a cellphone out windsurfing (incase something breaks and I need to call for help). Of course the AquaPac split and drowned my Nokia 7110 - took it apart and dunked it in fresh water to wash the salt off it and it all worked again.

    Since then the phone has been drowned so many times by rain, etc and still won't die. :)

    Having said that, one of my colleagues put his Ericson phone and wallet on the deck of a ZapCat [navaho-racing.co.uk] powerboat and then immediately helped to launch the thing. Only realised what he had do
  • His German Shepard saw the phone sitting on the coffee table and thought it would make a good chew toy.

    The coffee table, or the cell phone? :o)

    True story - I have a border collie (picture here [fotolog.net] for the curious) - when he was about 5 months old, we woke up one morning to discover the plastic coffee table strewn, in very tiny bits, across the living room.. Boomer had decided that night that hard plastic tasted good, and proceeded to attempt to eat it..

    We took him to daycare that day, and when we went to p
  • Oblique UCB reference...
  • A guy I work with dropped his phone and PDA in a urinal. I lost track of how many times he washed them.
  • My ex-girlfriend hit me over the head with my Nokia 6210 shrieking "you dirty cocksucker!" before she threw it at my face though she missed and it whizzed by my left ear hitting the wall. Now the display doesn't work anymore. Too bad the Nokia 6210 was a pretty neat phone, I had a far more meaningful relationship with that phone instead of with her in the end :-)
  • I haven't had any stories with the cell phone, but one woman on our team did accidentally flush the shared pager for the team down the toilet exactly as described above. It was one of those little mysteries about being on-call: "Where has this pager been?" I'm best off not knowing.

    We got a new pager, one of my weeks of being on-call, I had the pager on the kitchen counter. Next morning, I couldn't find the pager! I was late for work, cursing, and tearing the place apart to find the pager. I checked to make
  • I stopped using the "On-Call" phone immediately after this frightfull discovery. Arriving at work one Monday morning, after a rather large mug full of coffee, I made a most neccesary trip to the facilities. To my dismay the door was locked and strange grunting noises were eminating from within. Curiosity bested me and despite the urge to laugh histerically I listened further. A lull in the action was interupted by a loud plop followed by a littany of curses. Unable to control the urge to laugh histerically

Slashdot Top Deals

"The medium is the massage." -- Crazy Nigel

Close