Of Toilets and Cell Phones - A Cautionary Tale

A true story with urban legend potential: New York City train passengers experienced major delays during last night's rush hour commute when a man got his arm stuck in the toilet of a Metro-North train while trying to retrieve his dropped cell phone. According to news reports, train traffic was tied up for at least 90 minutes while firefighters struggled to free the man, a task which ultimately required disassembling the toilet in situ. Alas, the phone was not recovered.

This was not the first reported incident of its kind, as it turns out:

• In 2001, Pravda reported that a washer-woman got stuck up to her shoulder in a public toilet after being paid by another woman to fetch her dropped cell phone. Rescue workers had to unbolt the toilet and transport it, along with the woman, to a hospital, where it took one-and-a-half hours to dislodge her.



• In March 2003, three Kenyans actually died as a result of a similar business proposition. When a female college student offered passersby 1,000 shillings to fetch her cell phone from the depths of a pit latrine, a male volunteer went down and failed to return, followed by another, and another. All were found dead, having apparently succumbed to poisonous fumes.

Given that an estimated 600,000 mobile phones go down the loo annually in Great Britain alone (according to the only published study I could find on such matters), it seems safe to say we'll encounter this story again as time goes on — if not in the news, then surely as a cautionary tale passed on from friend to friend and/or snickered over at the water cooler.