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Lost & Found… but we keep it anyway
Why...
Is getting back stuff you have lost so difficult? Yes, I understand that my i-Phone and i-Pad should be attached to my wrists with a piece of string, just like a toddler’s gloves. I do have a tendency to lose things… A LOT. However, recently I left my i-Pad on a Turkish Airline flight that had to connect via Ataturk (Istanbul) Airport. I left the i-Pad on the plane that landed in Ataturk from Malta and noticed it missing on the plane to Sofia, my final destination. So far, so stupid. Rang the airline. Hooray they have found it. To confirm it was mine they asked for the access code to turn it on. I gave it to them. “When are you coming to collect it from Lost and Found?” I replied I was not coming back though Ataturk so could I send a courier to collect. “No. Lost and Found is airside (i.e. after customs/immigration control) so you have to collect yourself.” Having a Lost and Found at an airport that you can only physically pick up yourself if travelling is as logical as a chocolate tea-pot. In addition, my insurance company declined to pay out a loss as the item was in fact recovered. Now if I was a cynical chap, I might think this is part of a cunning plan. You lose an item on a plane, you hand over the access code to show it is yours, they know you are unlikely to collect and before you can say Ebay, it’s for sale… but that would be a terrible thing to suggest…….
...and another thing
It is quite amazing what people do leave behind on various forms of transport. Tax returns and divorce papers are pretty common. I can quite understand leaving those behind hoping that its finder’s keepers and someone else has to pay the alimony or tax bill.
In New York a Real Doll was left behind on the Lexington Avenue Subway line. Let me clarify. A Real Doll costs up to US$51,000 and is the world’s most advanced sex robot.
The mind boggles at the number of questions that spring to mind. Was this a date that went wrong? Dinner before an evening of wild sex but the guy just couldn’t find a topic of conversation? Or was the abandonment the result of an argument and a sad parting of the ways? How do you get a sexbot onto the subway anyway? Do you have to buy her a ticket? Carry her under your arm or maybe put her in a wheelchair? And finally how can you accidently leave behind something that costs more than a Porche?
In the UK we had a spook who left a bunch of Top Secret papers in a mini-cab, and in Scottsboro Alabama, local transport found a missile guidance system for a fighter jet; no doubt both en route for a meeting with a Russian spy to exchange for cash.
I can just imagine that conversation. The last words…
“Hi Ivan, do you have the money? Great, here are the plans… doh. I left them in the subway… I’ll ring lost property.”
Bang bang!
More interesting was the prosthetic leg complete with shoe found by London Transport. You walk onto the tube but hop off??? Or how about the head found on the Metro in Paris. No one noticed a headless corpse getting off at the Musee D’Orsee and stopped him to say:
“Excuse me I believe you left this head on the train?”
However, I must admit a sin. Once when I returned a car to a company whilst working in Lloyds Insurance, there was a row. It centred on an uprated stereo I had installed which they insisted as it was now in the car, was theirs. I could not remove it.
“What is in the car when you return it is ours. We don’t run a Lost and Found on company cars.”
The next day the Finance Director rang in a fury to say there was £425 worth of parking ticket in the boot.
I reminded him that on return, what was in the car was now theirs!
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Good on you Marker…
Keep em coming. We really enjoy your take on life!