Subway Lost Card: Fill & Download for Free

I was carrying extremely powerful rare earth magnets (165 lb pull force) for work in my back pack . They were wrapped in 8 inches of bubble wrap to prevent them from getting too close to anything.As I was sitting down, a total a-hole got on the train and pushed me out of the way, took the seat I was about to sit in, and gave me a nasty look. I wound up standing next to him. Slowly, I undid the bubble wrap and put it next to the Macbook he was working on and the satchel with his wallet and phone. I kept moving it around subtly. After a few minutes, his screen went out with a very bright flash. I don’t know what happened to his credit cards or cell phone. He kept trying to reboot it but it was not responding at all.I didn’t know if it would actually do anything. I just really hate rude people on the subway. Luckily his computer didn’t fly up and stick to my backpack.(UPDATE:) It’s been great to read the many responses this has; I have never told anyone this story. I really go out of my way to be a decent person but when people take advantage of me, I can’t let it go. I have used annoy-a-trons several times on coworkers (Google it) and did MUCH worse as a teenager. The point is, I am fair and decent, however, I won’t suffer A-Holes taking advantage of me or screwing me over.This guy pushed me out of the way hard as I was sitting down and then proceeded to give me a shitty look like “do you want to fight about it?” My options were to fight him, start an argument that would not get my seat back unless I picked him up, or OTHER. I wasn’t willing to start a fight on a full subway car or anywhere else. I just couldn’t let it go. Not with these awesome magnets in my backpack ready for a little experiment!Now for the doubters …. If you stack six of these magnets you have 3–4 times the force of a single magnet. They have small Teflon spacers between them so you can separate them when you need them. These slightly reduce their combined force. At 8–10 inches with bubble wrap, there is very little magnetic force as their strength decreases exponentially with distance. However, I am still careful not to put my cell phone or wallet near them. I opened the bubble wrap at the bottom of the stack and then closed my backpack with the end of the stack right against the inside canvas of my backpack. I was surprised it worked at a distance of about 6 inches. As I said, I was careful because I did not want it to “grab” the computer. Nothing happened for a while but it absolutely took the computer out like an EMP had gone off. Maybe it had to wait until the HDD was active. If it warped the platter and pulled it into the read/write arm it would scratch the shit out of the platter. I looked it up yesterday and the HDD on a Macbook Pro is on the side I was standing on.IDK how it worked, but, to my pleasant surprise, IT DID. Try it out! ;) I lost a bit of face and hopefully he lost $2K of electronics and spent a day getting his credit and bank cards replaced.Will it teach him a lesson? Probably not, but I don’t care; I made his life temporarily suck without causing bodily harm .#magneticvigilante

I once lost my passport 3 hours before a flight and ended up boarding it anyway with my… subway card.It was back in 2012. I used to live in Paris and had just spent the previous two weeks in Greece for vacation with my wife. We had a early morning Athens-Paris return flight, so we stayed in a hotel in central Athens.We woke up around 6am and then decided to take the subway to go to the airport. Our hotel was about a 3-minute walk from the subway station, so we thought we would just walk to the station. Why not, right? I could literally see the subway station entrance from the hotel.Big mistake.What I didn't know was that one does not simply walk around Omonia Square this early in the morning.The place was literally crawling with ‘gangs’, people getting high on the street and acting weirdly, shady people engaging in all sorts of illegal activities. There were probably 50 of them, gathered in different groups. Not sure what they were all doing just standing there on the street at 6am on a Wednesday morning.So obviously, what was meant to happen, well happened. About halfway to the station, as we were walking, I heard my wife scream. Some guy was trying to steal her purse.Not thinking twice, I dropped my heavy backpack to help her. Luckily, as soon as I made my move, the thief ran away. He was definitely more interested in stealing our shit than getting into a fight.Except, another guy showed up out of nowhere behind my back and ran away with the backpack I had just left unattended. By the time I realized it was gone, so was the second thief.My backpack contained well… you guessed it, my passport. And my wife's passport as well. Along with our money, all our travel documents and pretty much everything else we had brought with us to Greece.I think this was followed by a few minutes of panic, if I recall correctly. Getting your passport stolen less than 3 hours before your flight in a foreign country is not exactly the ideal situation, as you can imagine.One of the shady individuals that witnessed the scene took pity on us and called the cops. He seemed like he was the leader of his group — a different group than the one that just mugged us. Or so it seemed at least.The police arrived a few minutes later and took us to the station. They gave us a standard report of theft statement in Greek. The process was quick. I think we stayed about 5 minutes or so at the police station. Definitely not the first time they were issuing such documents to tourists that were mugged.I was not too hopeful that this paper would be enough for the airport folks to let us take our return flight, but since there was nothing else we could do so early in the morning, we decided we'd head to the airport anyway.The police station was just a few minutes walk from the subway station where we got mugged. Sun had risen, so now the whole place looked a lot less creepy. And we had no money to call a cab anyway.So there we were, walking back to the scene of the crime.As I was approaching the stairs that led to the station, I saw the guy who called the cops coming towards us. He stopped in front of me, looked at me and handed me… my home keys and my Paris subway card.He was obviously in on this, or at least knew the guys that were. But for some reason, they had just decided to hand back what they thought wasn’t of any value to them. They probably saw this as an act of kindness or something. Right after stealing all my shit. Cool, thanks bro.So anyway, fast-forward an hour. My wife and I were now at the airport check-in counter trying to explain our situation to the check-in agents. They asked to see the papers issued by the police to corroborate our version of the facts. My wife handed them hers as I looking for mine in my pocket.Now, here comes the best part of the whole fucking story:On the way to the airport, I had managed to lose the paper.When it's not your day, it's not your day.So there we were at the checking counter, with no passport, no money, no ID of any kind, and only 1 out of 2 statements from the police. The check-in agents proceeded to call the police station to verify my claim that my passport was stolen.Apparently, it was fine. They were willing to give us our boarding passes, but only if I was able to provide some sort of ID with my photo and name next to it. At this point, a library card would have done the job.The only thing I had left was my Paris Navigo card — the very card that that shady ‘benefactor’ had handed me back on Omonia Square. Luckily, it had both my picture and my name on it.We managed to take our return flight and head back to Paris without hassle.I'm not sure whether the ground staff was technically allowed to let us board the flight — even with the extenuating circumstances we had — or if they just sympathized with our misery. But thanks anyway, that conclusion made this whole terrible mess a little less terrible.

Maybe, but it might take awhile. If you lost your wallet in a really, really big subway system like New York City, the wallet might eventually wind up at the MTA’s “Lost Property Unit,” located at Penn Station.Why might it take awhile? MTA’s website advises people who’ve found a smaller item, like a wallet, to turn it in at the station agent booth. Depending on how busy the station is and where it’s located, I’d imagine it could take a few days for the item to be delivered to the Lost Property Unit. And they probably have so many items coming in, that it might take a few days beyond that, just for them to realize they have your wallet.The MTA New York City Transit Lost and Found page has details on how you can file a claim for a lost item… presumably, they will contact you if the wallet shows up. Lost items are held for at least 3 months, and depending on the value of the item, they may hold onto it for up to 3 years.If you’re talking about the subway in another city, check the subway agency’s website. They should have a page detailing their lost and found policy, specifically, where items are collected. Most times, any item found anywhere in the entire system should be funneled into a single collection location, similar to how everything lost in the NYC subway winds up at Penn Station.Of course there’s also the possibility that whomever finds your wallet simply takes any cash and/or tries to use your credit cards or anything else they can take advantage of, before throwing it into the trash. Hopefully you have a list of “lost card hotlines” you can call to report your cards lost, so they can be frozen and replaced.