I was wrapping up my shopping experience at a grocery store when Clancy texted me to ask that I pick up some medications at Walmart. That extended by shopping trip to a second location. It was going to be a short trip, though. It worked out just as well for me because I had forgotten to restock the babyfood.

I noticed that there was something in the bottom of my cart when I pulled it out, but didn’t think that much of it. It wasn’t until I was putting the babyfood into the basket that I saw that it was an iPhone. An honest-to-god iPhone! In a shopping cart at Walmart. Go figure. I put it in my pocket while I finished picking out the babyfood and contemplated what to do about it. I basically had three options:

1) Finders keepers, losers weepers.

2) Hand the phone over to customer service.

3) Attempt to contact the phone’s owner on my own.

The advantage to #1 was NEW PHONE! Yay! Except that it was an iPhone, which I have no use for. Except that it might be fun to play around with one, mightn’t it be? It was an old iPhone, though, I think. I think? The only way I could really tell was that it seemed to be the classic iPhone size and had mediocre resolution on the display. There wasn’t a whole lot I could learn from that. Oh yeah, and it would be wrong for me to keep it. Someone purchased that phone and needed it. Stupid morality.

The advantage to #2 was that I could simply do it and be done with it. No more iPhone to worry about. The concern was that it would not actually find its way to its owner. It might instead find its way into an employee’s hand. Now a part of me wouldn’t mind that. Walmart employees are notoriously paid and their jackpot would probably mean a lot more to them than it would mean to me. They might even like Apple products. Presumably so, if they went to the trouble of stealing it. On the other hand, as with #1, it was somebody’s phone and they probably needed it. I felt like I would probably have more luck if I tried to contact the owner myself.

I was leaning towards #3. I surfed the phone and discovered precious little activity on it. I thought about texting somebody to have them have the owner of the phone contact me. But there was only one text conversation in the phone and it involved an assessment of the quality of illegal substances from a particular supplier. I searched the contacts and saw maybe ten entries, including Mom and Dad (listed separately). So I texted Mom and Dad saying that their son or daughter had lost their phone and here is how I can be contacted to get it back.

I noticed that the battery was running low, though, which was a problem because I don’t have a charger. I also wasn’t going to go buy a charger for this little project (and beyond which, wouldn’t have known which charger to buy). I could probably find someone who had a charger and charge it and leave it on waiting to hear back or… something. It was all getting rather complicated, though. What were the odds that I would get everything together versus the odds that they might, I don’t know, figure out that they must have lost it at Walmart and go up to the customer service deck.

I got a response from “Mom” saying “Ain’t none of my kids phone.” That, combined with the dying battery, and the desire to get on with my day, landed the phone in the customer service of Walmart on my way out the door.