Single Vote View

(Created on 21st March 2010)

Vote #138

The following question was presented:

OK - hypothetical scenario time. You're in a public toilet/restroom and you need a poo. You go into the cubicle, lock the door and start to take your trousers down. Next thing you hear is “plop”. You jump up and look down to see that your mobile phone has jumped out of you pocket and landed in the bowl. What do you do?

Results:

Spend 15 minutes trying to find something to poke it out then giving up and using hand anyway was the clear winner with 71% of the votes selected from the following:

Just leave it and walk away (0%)
Roll up your sleeves and fish it out (14%)
Stand there staring at it not knowing what to do (14%)
Cry for help (0%)
Cry (0%)
Spend 15 minutes trying to find something to poke it out then giving up and using hand anyway (71%)

Graphic of Results:

Pre-Result Discussion

Rag
21:46:46
21st March 2010

The silly thing is that you know it's never going to work again, so there's absolutely no reason to go fishing about in a used bowl, but I suspect many people would on the basis that they don't want to leave something behind or some irrational fear that someone will pick it up and it'll work for them and they'll rack up a huge bill.

Analysis:

As I said in my comments during voting, the correct answer really is to just leave it and walk away, but for some strange reason I think there's something in everyone that's telling you it's a piece of your property and you need to rescue it.

I'm rather impressed with the honest answer of stand there staring at it not knowing what to do. I do wonder how long you would stand there staring at it or would this just mean it's the end of your life. All motor activity would power down and you'd go into some catatonic state.

I guess the obvious thing to say is that I hope it doesn't happen to anyone. Being truthful, I've had a near miss a couple of times. Don't really know what I was doing to have the phone leap out of my pocket, but suffice it to say that when I smoked, I've had a couple of times when my cigarettes somehow developed the acrobatic skills of a jumping spider and leapt out of my shirt pocket into the bowl. The decision of what to do is a little more easy with cigarettes ..... OK, so maybe not - true story - I dropped a packet of cigarettes in the toilet at home back in the UK, fished them out and put them on top of the radiator to try and dry them out. At least it wasn't a public toilet.