The stupid adventures of Phil

So last week I dropped my car keys into a storm drain in the Trader Joe’s parking lot.

I think I handled it pretty well. I had locked my car, but I had my phone and my wallet, including my AAA card. So after standing there stunned at my own stupid clumsiness for a bit, I called AAA. They suggested calling the local water company to see if they could come out and lift the grate, but when I tried the customer service number, I couldn’t get anywhere without an account number and I don’t have an account with that water company. I went to the customer service desk in Trader Joe’s and asked if they had any advice; the lady suggested calling the local municipality or the non-emergency police number, which I kind of didn’t want to do.

So I decided to give up on getting the keys out and started calling friends with cars to ask if they could give me a ride home so I could get the spare keys in my apartment and then back to fetch my car. After getting 2 voicemails, I finally reached a cohortmate, who said he’d be happy to help and might have some baling wire that he could use to try to fish my keys out. While I was talking to him, word of my predicament seemed to have traveled around the Trader Joe’s, because a middle-aged woman (who probably had motherly feelings toward me) fetched a younger man who found a long loop of baling wire and they came outside to try to help me get my keys out. The woman used the flashlight on her phone to illuminate the keys while the man tried to use the end of the wire to pick them up. He was having trouble manipulating the wire, though, and it looked like a lost cause, so I went back to plan B (getting a ride home for my spare keys)… but then I realized that my apartment key was locked in my car, so I needed to call AAA again and have them let me into my car (because that’s free with AAA membership, but I’d have to pay a fee for after-hours lockout assistance from my apartment complex). My friend told me to let him know when I had an ETA for AAA so he could come pick me up.

I was waiting for AAA when the heroic Trader Joe’s employees came back out to the parking lot. The young guy had taped a wire hook to the end of a broomstick, and he was able to use that to fish out my keys. I offered to buy him a bottle of wine or something (twice!) but he turned it down. Unbelievably, the electronic fob still worked, even though it had been sitting in water for about an hour. I was really glad that I got those keys back not only because it would have taken longer to go home and get the spare keys, but also because they had the Loki keychain that @fuckyeahrichardiii gave me as a job market condolence present and I would have had to ask where I could get a new one 😛