I lost my wallet on Wednesday. It sucked. I eventually found it. The netherworld unto which it disappeared for several hours, sending my afternoon in to a frenzied spiral, I'll never know. I assume that I may have been stupid/old enough to have missed it the eighteen times I looked. My co-worker missing it the several times he looked in the same area? Not likely. It's not like I found it hidden at the end of the day.

I did learn one lesson out of the whole thing as I scrambled to cancel my bank and credits cards and figure out how to replace my ID. Between talking to customer service folks for my bank and credit cards, the police to report my wallet lost, the MTO about getting a replacement license and ownership, I learned that an unfortunately large number of people don't immediately move to cancel their cards. The police officer I was talking to noted that he's had people wait several days to report their wallet lost. They only did after large sums of money had been withdrawn or spent. They knew the cards were gone. They knew they weren't coming back. Yet they waited until this went completely south before bothering to do anything about it.

Seriously, first thing to do is cancel all your cards and all your memberships. Then call the police and report your shit lost/stolen. Don't sit around the pool hoping it'll turn up. It's better to have it turn up and need to wait a couple days for replacement cards then have to pay off several thousand dollars you didn't spend.

david shute - Jan 29, 2010 at 10:43 PM