FindMyiPhone Again

[Martin Hash]

My wife, Gwynne, finds great pleasure in getting something free. She'll drive miles, wait in line for hours, or suffer almost any indignity for a free doughnut when the light is on, stack of buttermilk pancakes on her birthday, or an ice cream sample at a new restaurant. She is especially fond of making an event out of it, often involving friends, a complicated schedule, and possibly some kind of physical exertion.

Gwynne picked up one of those free weekly local news flyers at the grocery store and noticed that Starbucks was giving away a free pumpkin cupcake for Halloween, and it was only a couple miles away, easily in walking distance, so of course that became the next day's special event. A few hours after getting back she told me, “I think I lost my iPhone.”
“When?”
“I don't know; I don't check it all the time like you do?”
“Any guesses?”
“The only place I went was Starbucks in the Sunset Place Mall... Oh, I remember, I left it on the table under the free newspaper!” (I didn't ask how that might have happened?)
So we drove over to Starbucks but they didn't have her phone. And the Lost-n-Found department of the shopping mall it was in didn't have her phone. And there was no phone laying under the tables or on the benches.
“Hey,” I suggested, “Let's try FindMyiPhone.”
“What's that?”
“I can just enter your phone number on my iPhone & the location of your iPhone will pop up.”
“Really. Watch.”
After less than a minute there was a red circle on the screen where Gwynne's iPhone was. “There it is. Somewhere right near here.”
We looked around in a circle trying to get our bearings. My iPhone pointed at her iPhone so we walked that way.
“There's nothing here,” Gwynne was crestfallen.
She desultorily searched through a nearby trashcan but no luck.
“Hey, what if it's above us?”
The shopping mall was three stories, and we were at ground level where the Starbucks was but there was something above us, so we went up the stairs. It was a women's lingerie store, not a place I'm accustomed to going nor feeling comfortable in so I handed my iPhone to Gwynne, and sent her in with the instructions that if she pushed that button on the screen, her own iPhone would honk real loud. She nodded her head, ready to pursue her iPhone to the ends of the earth & marched in.

Sunset Lingerie.JPG

FindMyiPhone2.JPG

Employees in the place were all Asian, and greeted her with big smiles when she approached . “Hi, can I help you?” asked the one behind the sales counter.
“Hi, did you find an iPhone?” Like a trooper Gwynne dispensed with the pleasantries.
The young salesgirl looked confused, her smile dropped. “Uh, no, what do you mean?”
“I lost my iPhone in the Starbucks downstairs, and I was wondering if you found it?”
The salesgirl turned to wave someone else to the counter. A olderish girl approached. She had a “manager” badge on. “How can I help you she asked, smiling.
Gwynne was relentless, “I'm looking for my iPhone. Do you have it here?”
Both girls looked at each other for a moment then turned back to Gwynne & and older one replied somewhat sadly, “I'm sorry we don't. But if you give us your name & number, we'll call you if we happen to come across one.” She smiled even wider, her face full of sincere willingness to help.
Undeterred, Gwynne pushed the alarm button on my iPhone. Immediately from somewhere behind the girls a loud honking began. Gwynne just looked at them. The girls weren't quite sure what the noise was. The younger one suspiciously asked, “What's that sound?”
“That's my iPhone,” Gwynne announced triumphantly.
The manager rushed away into a side room & was hidden from view for a while. The honking continued. After a while she came out holding an iPhone. Gwynne pushed the button again & the honking stopped.
“Somebody must have left it here without us knowing it...” she tried to say.
“We were waiting from somebody to ask for it,” the younger girl stammered.

Gwynne had a big smile on her face the rest of the day.