Save a phone - Talk to a cigarette

Here is a good story.

We aren't supposed to have our cell phones at my new job in the Memphis FedEx hub. I usually make it a point to just leave it in the car, but last night I realized after I got on the shuttle bus that it was still in my pocket. Expletive. I think now that it would probably have been ok to take it in as long as I left it off and in a pocket, but I wasn't sure, and as we go through metal detectors and whatnot I really didn't want to risk there being a problem. But I didn't have time to ride back to my car and then to the hub again if I wanted to get to work on time. And I definitely wanted to be on time. Late no es bueno. I reasoned that I must therefore find a place outside to hide my phone until such time as I could recover it.

The problem with this is that, contrary to what one might imagine, there are very few hiding places in this particular parking lot where a valuable little piece of equipment would be well enough concealed from the hundreds of eyes that might be interested in pilfering it. At last I decided on a small concrete pole in the corner. I reached behind the pole and, lo and behold, someone in like straits had already found that particular little hiding place. I couldn't begrudge them - found it rather amusing actually, and laughed to myself. But I'm not too terribly trusting of human nature and didn't wish to donate to the cause of Joe Sells Other People's Cell Phones For Money.

Now I was in a pickle. Part of the complication was hiding the phone without a hundred people watching me do it. I walked around, hoping for an inviting little corner but finding nothing. Now around the edge of one side of the parking lot runs a concrete sidewalk, which is raised above the asphalt. This leaves a little "ditch" as it were between the sidewalk and the fence. In this ditch are little bits of trash, pieces of paper and whatnot. When I spied the empty cigarette carton, I knew I'd found my hiding place.

It was perfect. I waited until there was nobody coming down the walk and relatively few people behind me, then surreptitiously palmed my phone, knelt down, slipped it into the carton, and turned it over. Those who did see me may have thought me a few bales short of a full load, observing my seeming fascination with those little bits of trash, pieces of paper and whatnot, but who cares. There lay my phone, in plain sight, but unnoticed by anyone. Wise thought for the day - there are many things in plain sight that no one sees. I gave myself a little pat on the back and spent very few anxious moments over the next few hours, confident that no one would take the slightest interest in an old empty cigarette carton. As indeed, it turns out, they did not. Teehee.

I will say that the few slightly anxious thoughts were due to the fact that I forgot to turn the phone off. Imagining some poor fellow's reaction to a trashed cigarette carton suddenly vibrating to life was almost worth it though. Heehee.

The End.