Forgetting to remember.

“That guy looked like Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” I remarked about a customer who had just left the bike shop.

Yann shook his head, “I don’t remember that movie.”

“You watched it with me! As soon as I show you a photo you’re going to be like, ‘Oh! Oh! I ‘member.'”

How convenient is it to have a smartphone on hand to jog somebody’s shitty memory? Except for when your garbage short-term memory causes you to forget where you put your phone.

I remembered that I had placed my phone in the top drawer of the large tool chest in the bike shop. I had taken it out of my pocket so that I could sit on a stool to wash grimy bike parts in the sink, which was located next to the tool chest.

That’s the problem with lady pockets: they’re not designed to carry phones or pretty much anything.

I returned to the tool chest to retrieve my phone. It’s not there. Where is it? In the words of Jeff Spicoli:

I DON’T KNOW.

Perhaps somebody had noticed the phone in the tool chest and decided to move it to a better place? Yann and I asked the others in the shop, but nobody had seen it.

I left the shop to check the staff room. I checked my pannier. I gave myself a pat-down repeatedly to make sure it wasn’t still on my person as it has been in the past. The remainder of my shift was spent trying to pretend I wasn’t super bothered by the situation.

Then Yann remembered that I had location sharing enabled on Google. My phone was still in the bike shop! What a relief!

After work, we started to really look for it. We looked under the tool chest, under the air compressor tank, under the workbenches, inside the caliper cases, in the pile of rags and a bunch of other weird places. Knowing it was somewhere in the shop and still not being able to find it made it all so much more frustrating.

Nobody was surprised to learn that I had my phone on mute, but many were surprised to learn that I didn’t even have it on vibrate. Why? I check my phone when I can. If I don’t check it, it’s because I’m busy. I don’t need the interruption of a vibrating phone. Unless you are expecting an important call/text, there’s no reason to have any notification switched on as it will only annoy others. I’d call myself old-fashioned, except I’m also the type to freak out when I find myself without my phone.

Several others helped us look. Yann and I spent an hour and a half huffing dust as we combed the bike shop before giving up for the day.

Kristina is another person I share my location with, so I asked her to send Yann a screenshot in case the location would be more precise on her phone. She did just that but also offered a helpful suggestion. According to her, it would be possible to force the ringer remotely.

Brilliant! But the bike shop was closed. We had to wait until the next morning. As Yann is the one with functional hearing, he went to uncover it for me. I asked him to take a photo of where he found it.

 

I had checked all the caliper cases, EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE.

I am grateful to have my phone back, but the trade-off is that now I have to deal with my co-workers making fun of me FOREVER.