Cell Phone vs Toilet.....Cell Phone Wins!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, yesterday I was getting ready for work. Sneaking stealthily around the bedroom trying not to wake sleeping husband who’s been sick and needs his rest. (see what a good wife I am, I’m not Satan’s Marshmallow at all)

I grab my cell phone and tuck it into my back pocket and head into the bathroom to brush and floss. Once the dental hygiene is complete I realize that I really need to tinkle before I embark on my commute or I’ll be stuck in traffic on I-4 with a full bladder which is not such a nice feeling.

I unbuckle, unzip and just as I’m lowering my pants and getting ready to sit I hear “kerplunk, splash” :eek:

Crap! I forgot the cell phone was in my back pocket and now it’s in the toilet :smack:

OK, I haul my phone out of the toilet (feeling somewhat grateful that this happened before I’d had a chance to leave anything in the bowl) and dry it off and then while I’m sitting there (I still had to tinkle, remember?) I take it apart and dry the insides and shake the water out of it. I realize that time is of the essence so I finish my :ahem: business and pull myself back together and scurry into the other bathroom where we keep the blow dryer.

I blow dry my cell phone for a while and shake some more water out of it. It looks dry so I put it back together and try it. Nothing. Damn.

I take it apart again and leave the various parts on a towell to dry and take off for work. I show up for work 40 minutes late due to my little mishap. No one notices as usual. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to show up at all.

Anyway, I take an early lunch (show up late, leave early, that’s my motto) and go home, put the phone back together and it powers on! And I get the Cingular tone as it powers up. One problem though, the display is blank. I try to make a call but it won’t go through. :frowning: So my well rested husband and I head to the Cingular store.

The Cingular store is staffed with really stupid people and the really stupid person who helps me is no help at all (and why would he be, he’s stupid). I have insurance so I can pay the $50 deductible and get a replacement phone. I’m not eligible for an upgrade according to him though I point out that their web site says I am eligible for an upgrade. The really stupid man then relates a story about how his wife put his teenaged son’s phone through the wash. Full wash cycle. He said they took it apart and set it in front of a fan for a couple of days and it worked. This is, of course, the only useful information this man has given me so far. We thank him for his time and leave.

I get home, take phone apart again and put it in front of the fan.

Then I go on the Cingular web site and order an upgrade for $20 thinking at least it’s less than the deductible.

I head back to work and wonder how I’m going to live without my phone. I don’t have a home phone. The daughter, the husband and I all have cell phones and I use cable for my internet access so this is my phone, my only phone and now it’s dead.

Oh, well, I change my greeting and leave my work number and my pager number and figure the new phone will arrive in 1-2 days so I can probably live that long with no phone. I can still check my voice mail.

I head home from work feeling a little empty since my trusty cell isn’t in my pocket.

Once home I decide to give it one more try. I take the phone from it’s perch in front of the fan and I put it back together. It works! :slight_smile: Oh joy! I call my husband and tell him the good news. And log on to the Cingular site to cancel my order.

I vow never to put the phone in my back pocket again. Maybe I need to buy a belt clip?

2

I dropped my old phone in a men’s urinal. (Twice. While pissing. Which will teach me to talk and pee.) On both occasions, I fished it out, quickly rinsed it under tap (I was drunk) and – joy of joys – it still worked!

As an added bonus, no one ever wanted to borrow my amphibious phone again.

I’ve conducted similar phone experiments involving a glass of G&T (winner: Bombay Sapphire), and the ocean (winner: the salty blue sea).

3

Belt clips aren’t all that secure, either. If you accidentally hit the catch, the phone falls off.

Myself, I use a case meant to hold sunglasses while you’re on the slopes. It’s got an integrated loop that you have to run your belt through, so it can’t fall off. It also has a velcro closure on top so that the phone is held in place. I have one of those flip phones and the case is a little too big so I stuffed the bottom with a bit of styrofoam cut to fit.

Another nifty thing is that the case has a clip on it so that when you go to the restroom you can clip the phone to a belt loop and it stays put.

Not bad for a $4 investment.
:smiley:

4

You guys are lucky. I dropped a cell phone once into toilet.
It immediately died of embarrassment.

I was able to turn it on one more time, long enough to get most (not all) of the phone numbers I had stored on there. The same week my PDA got smashed to bits after it fell out of my pocket - causing me to irrevocably lose some contact information.

5

Cheapest, crappiest non-water-resistant digital watch money can buy VS. 10-minute swim in a chlorine-rich Mediterranean swimming pool…

Digital watch wins it by a country mile.

6

I fried a work pager via toilet bowl a few years back. A really nice one that was work provided and payed for. I told them I had no idea what happened, or why it was making that weird buzzing noise.

7

That sounds good. My only objection to the belt option is that I already wear a pager for work. I’m wondering exactly how much gear I want to have hanging around my waistline. It’s certainly not making my figure any more girlish.

Maybe I should just keep it in my purse.

8

Several years ago, my husband dropped his cell phone in a toilet. After a couple days of drying out in a warm, sunny location, it worked just fine. I chalked it up to the more “sturdy” builds of the time, so I’m glad to hear it still happens.

A coworker’s friend recently dropped her phone in a (public) toilet - while she was flushing it. Whoops. Wave goodbye to that phone, I guess.

9

Slight hijack - At least you’re not the only one who has done this (and apparently belt clips aren’t fail-safes!!). The linked thread, plus the original one that spawned it, are possibly the second-funniest threads I’ve ever read on the Dope :smiley:

10

No, what happens is you unbuckle the belt prior to sitting down on the toilet, and the phone slips off the end of the belt.

11

Were it not for it looking extremely dorky, I’d be tempted to put it on a lanyard, like British Army Officers did with their pistols back in the day.

My old phone (a Nokia 6200 series; splendid device that did its job and did it well for 5 years, but the batteries kept developing “memory” and the company was not offering calling plans on the old format any more) lived in a nylon holster with a Velcro belt loop (thus adjustable to make a closed loop around ANY belt) and a Velcro top closure. As long as I remembered to place it near the bucke end it was pretty secure – if placed near the loose end, it could slide off.

My current Samsung x427 has not a case or holster but a sim-leather cover, or “skin”, with a slide-on clip and a ring loop for securing to a strap/lanyard/keychain. Designed more as a hit/scratch protector than as a carrier, really. The clip can actually serve to secure it in place over a belt loop, belt, waistband, or pocket (though it pretty much inutilizes the side pocket). Thing is, the phone by itself would comfortably fit in any pocket, but with its slick plastic case it would slip out of there with ease if I did any sort of moving around.

12

My current Samsung x427 recently got TKOed by a thunderstorm one recent dark and stormy night. It fell out on my driveway and lay there until morning when I discovered it.

After a drying out period, it starting working again, but the display is permanently blank.

13

My current Samsung x427 got TKOed by a thunderstorm one recent dark and stormy night. It fell out on my driveway and lay there until morning when I discovered it.

After a drying out period, it starting working again, but the display is permanently blank.

14

:smack:

15

I am glad that I am not the only one who has ever dropped a cell phone into a toilet after peein’. I too was amazed that it worked after a thorough cleaning and drying out period. On the upside, when anybody asks to use my cell, I say sure but I dropped it in a toilet right after I had peed in it once. Suddenly, the desire to talk ceases. :smiley:

16

Who said I peed into the toilet the phone fell in?
I was sitting down.
I finished what I was doing, then stood up.
The phone then went ‘ker-plunck’.
I don’t squat to pee.

I said it died of embarassment.

17

So you fished your phone out of poop water? :eek:

18

It was my poop.

But I didn’t enjoy a single second of it.