How I lost my phone

Yesterday after work I got in the bus back home and proceeded to happily play on my Nintendo 3DS for the whole trip. I was about to finish a stage of Fire Emblem Awakening, leveling up a lot of characters, dodging attacks and surviving hits, all nice and well!

Then the ride was over, I noticed I was the last person left in the vehicle, I rushed to the exit and stepped out to the street. Ten seconds later, I realized I did not have my phone with me.

My workplace provides us with free transportation, so there are contacts and people in charge who may be able to help me out, I just didn’t know who they are.

Thankfully, I didn’t lose my work phone. I started messaging people from there, a coworker who may know someone, or another peer who uses the same bus.

I manage to join the WhatsApp group of the bus route, where I can finally contact the transport manager, but I got no reply back.

I decide to let my boss know, to see if he could help me find someone else to ask around, he told me he would look into it as well. I was stressed out of my mind.

Running back home like a madman, I dash to my room and my laptop and check to see if Google’s Find My Device works—I remembered my Google account was never logged in. Sometimes you wonder if a degoogled life is even worth it. LOL

Both Signal and WhatsApp can work without having the device online nowadays, so I was able to message a bunch of people and let them know I could be offline for a while, I may even have to change phone numbers because of this, but I wasn’t fully giving up yet.

Another advantage I had is that I still keep my older Xiaomi phone, and even though the power button was acting up, it decided to behave for once and turn on after a charge. I was able to log-in to my bank apps from there and keep an eye on them. That also meant that not every single picture was lost.

Oh, how many things I would have lost… My chat history, all the photos I’ve taken on my Nothing 3(a), my AntennaPod stats, one of my banking apps. I’d have to redownload all my music too, which is annoying.

Eventually, my boss tells me he gave my contact info to someone in HR, and few more minutes later I’m sent photos of the lost device. That brings me relief, as I’m told the transport supervisor has it and that I can check with him tomorrow—which is today now.

My phone is safe and sound, and now it’s back in my hands, peace of mind returns.

Clearly, it’s a bad idea not to check where your belongings are before getting out of a bus. It’s also not ideal to get too distracted by a videogame or to rush things—definitely double-checking from now on. This was honestly one of the most ideal scenarios ever, there are a lot of things that could have gone very very wrong.

I could have left my work phone there as well, my boss could have ignored me completely, I could have no access to Signal/WhatsApp on my laptop, or lack a secondary phone to check my bank accounts, I could have taken a public bus with no ties to my workplace, the bus driver could have kept the device for himself, or the bus manager, a simple lie is all it takes. Thank God it’s all over now, and nothing was lost.

Later I realized I do have Find My Device, I was using a blank Google account untied from anything but that specific phone, so I forgot. I did have the login info backed up, so in the future I can make use of this. Although it would probably have been stressful to see my phone somewhere without being able to do much about it.

Make your backups guys! And also, if you know some good way to track your device without using Google services, let me know!

At the very least, I guess that being able to not be glued to my phone for ten seconds is a good thing, so… win?

This is day 91 of #100DaysToOffload