Where Has Your Cell Phone Been? 67
"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."
A defective cat? Is it in warranty? (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Painful insertion (Score:2)
My Phones.... (Score:3, Funny)
#1 - Ericsson sh*tbox flip thingy. Faithful to the end.... end of its screwed on
#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...
Re:My Phones.... (Score:2)
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)
Re:What sort of company... (Score:2)
(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.
Re:What sort of company... (Score:2)
What part of tongue-in-cheek funny don't *you* understand? ;-)
Re:What sort of company... (Score:2)
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.
Re:What sort of company... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What sort of company... (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:What sort of company... (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Share a cell phone? (Score:2)
Re:Share a cell phone? (Score:1, Insightful)
Just have a portabable number (Score:2)
I can remember an incident (Score:5, Funny)
I'm going to regret posting this. (Score:4, Funny)
Feel free to make fun of me for this, all my friends did.
Most of mine end up in the lake (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Beware the Labrador (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Energizer Phone (Score:1)
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..
Re:Energizer Phone (Score:1)
Re:Energizer Phone (Score:2)
Where has your cellphone been ?? (Score:2, Offtopic)
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)
Buzzz...oh...oH...OH...pop and it's gone
Several embarrassed females/couples ended up in hospitals to have a doctor remove "lost" cellphones.
Re:Actually (Score:1)
I work at a coal mine (Score:5, Funny)
- 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.
Re:I work at a coal mine (Score:2)
Mine's a simple story (Score:1)
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)
Wtf? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wtf? (Score:1)
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.
A few more..... (Score:2)
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 washed it in the washing machine. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I washed it in the washing machine. (Score:2)
Re:I washed it in the washing machine. (Score:1)
Re:I washed it in the washing machine. (Score:1)
Company minutes. (Score:1)
Re:Company minutes. (Score:1)
Probably shouldn't mention this... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
Darwin award honorable mention... (Score:1)
My 7110 keeps getting drowned and still comes back (Score:1)
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
Dogs and plastic objects... (OT) (Score:1)
The coffee table, or the cell phone?
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
"What are those stickers for?" (Score:1)
Never use that phone again... (Score:1)
Nokia 6210 -- just right for hitting people with (Score:1)
Vanishing pager (Score:1)
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
fishing for fones (Score:1)