For lunch today I decided to hit up Buffalo Wild Wings since they have $0.60 boneless wings on Thursdays. The service is often slow but the wings are good so it makes up for it. After an enjoyable mountatin of medium sauced boneless I took a trip to the restroom then headed out to a coffee shop to finish my days work. Everything was progressing according to plan, until while sitting in the referenced coffee shop I tried to grab my phone. It wasn’t there?!

Not in my pocket, not in my seat, not in my car, not in my bag… oh shit I left it in the restroom at BWW. Since I’d been gone for about 30 minutes I had no hope of it still being there but in an attempt to rally against hope I headed back to the restaurant. The hostess, though sympathetic, reported that no one had turned in a phone. The bar didn’t have my phone and the bathroom didn’t have my phone either.

With despair rapidly setting in I began the journey to the nearest Verizon store to report my phone lost. I had learned during a trip to Austin the year before that it was of utmost importance to have a lock code set on the phone at all times. You never know when someone you haven’t authorized to do so picks up you phone. I of course had since removed the lock code and now every bit of my personal information was available to the perp who now had my second brain in their hands.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the Verizon Store I remembered that my phone has the locator service attached. I fired up my portable hot spot and opened the browser on my laptop. At least I might be able to walk up to the perps door and try to get the phone back. I really didn’t want to pay for another one and my bravado was presently at a high mark. Once I was logged into icloud.com I discovered that my phone was still sitting in BWW without me. I immediately did a remote lock on it and considered the remote wipe. The popup warning me that the locator service would quit working prevented me from doing so.

Now it was back to BWW and this time I entered with my laptop open. I told the hostess the phone was still in the building and I was going to send a tone to it. After receiving confirmation that the tone was sent we wen’t off looking again. Still coming up empty the manager came storming out of his office a few minutes later complaining that he couldn’t get the phone to quit beeping. Turns out they thought the phone was the night managers when they checked the office earlier.

Many apologies were sent my way (but no free food coupons… just sayin’). So now I am once again complete and happy. So if you take anything from this post, it’s that you should set up your phone to auto lock. The discomfort involved in thinking someone could have all your information is enough to give you an ulcer.