Di won the SPOTD award for leaving her handbag on a tram during peak hour. It was ultimately returned to her through a series of remarkably lucky events so perhaps she would also be candidate for LPOTD…

With a day off work on Friday, Di spent the day happily browsing inside a shopping centre a few suburbs away. On the way back, she had to get off her city-bound tram to board a bus which would take her back to our suburb. Unfortunately, loaded down with shopping bags, Di managed to alight the tram without taking her handbag with her. She only took one step before she realised the problem (due to the lack of weight on one arm) but the tram was already heading off down the road.

With all her money and mobile phone inside the handbag, she had no way to deal with the situation so raced into a nearby 7-11 store to beg for money. Her first stroke of luck was finding a 7-11 store employee that immediately understood the urgency of the situation. Her second stroke of luck was that he was willing to give her 50c from the till so she could use the payphone to call for help. She’d decided to call me at work, figuring I’d still be there and I could make multiple calls as required to help solve the problem.

In a panicked state her trembling fingers dialed frantically … the wrong number. Her third stroke of luck though was that she managed to mis-dial the phone number but still managed to get a different extension within the University. Her fourth stroke of luck was that she was able to find someone at work on a Friday afternoon well after 5pm. Her fifth stroke of luck was that they knew how to transfer a phone call within the phone system (something that surprisingly few staff actually know how to do). Her sixth stroke of luck continued when I happened to be in the office. Given the practical class had finished a few minutes early and I knew Di was not at work (and therefore there was no need to wait for her so we’d travel home together), I had been considering taking off early for once. However, as so often happens, work had sucked me in and I’d decided to work a bit later and thus was in the office when the call transferred through.

As soon as she explained what had happened, I told her to stay where she was (so I knew how to contact her) and then immediately called the Yarra Trams customer feedback line. It turns out that they cannot contact trams or tram depots directly but they could give me the number of the tram depot. I figured that if I could get in touch with the depot, they could put out a call to the relevant tram drivers to check for the bag immediately. The phone number for the depot just rang out though – nobody would answer it. It turned out later on that the person who would ordinarily answer the phone was too busy outside the office to get anywhere near it to answer it but at the time it was very frustrating.

Finally I decided to just sprint to the tramline, jump on the nearest tram and convince the driver to put the call through the depot for me. I’d decided that even if they were not answering calls from the general public after 5pm, they’d still take calls from drivers and the message could get through. The seventh stroke of luck was that a tram arrived immediately I reached the tram stop, and the eighth stroke of luck was that the driver could understand the urgency of the situation. The ninth stroke of luck came about five minutes later when, after the call had gone out, an announcement crackled back to the driver of the tram I’d boarded that the bag had been handed in by a member of the public and therefore it would be available at the depot for collection when the driver next went past it (~45 minutes from then). The tenth and final stroke of luck was that after collecting it from the depot Diana discovered the handbag had not only been turned in but it still contained her wallet and mobile phone, as well as all the other items inside, untouched.

As part of a pseudo-scientific study, she later decided to test her run of luck by buying two scratchie lotto tickets. Neither of them won…

Categories: SPOTD