Lost items: does Lyft really deliver?

Green. Aluminum. Black, Plastic Screw-on Lid. Brand; Unknown.

“I lost an item,” read the tab on the Lyft app. It’s hidden in a difficult place to find, making it harder to find said lost item. Three email threads with Lyft-support later, I’ve got nothing.

I lost my green aluminum water bottle in a Lyft I took the other day. Sick with strep throat, I was slow to get out of the car at the doctor’s office, and I just left it in there. Not until I was coughing my lungs out, in need of water, did I realize what I had forgotten.

Everyone I complained to about this water bottle to has asked me one thing.

“Why don’t you just buy another one?”

Well that’s just it, I could buy another one. The exact same one. But I can’t. I don’t know the brand. After 7 years of dents, scratches, and peeled paint; it became its own. Which is really cheesy, but no amount of Google searching has turned up a similar looking bottle.

Why this water bottle and not another? It’s the color, the the grip, the convenient cap with a clip. That, and it’s been through everything I’ve been through; a total of 80 nights of camping, 25 miles of rivers paddled, countless flights, and of course, the one night I was hit by a car.

Lyft and Uber both offer options to try and reclaim a lost item. Both send a request to the driver, but only Lyft is free. Uber charges the passenger and addition $15 to pay the driver for the return. Lyft claims that the driver has been notified and given the proper contact info, but the lack of compensation only lessens the chance of getting them item back.

It’s a silly thing to worry about, but it’s a daily part of life that has just been forgotten in the right side cup holder of a 2013 Jeep Wrangler.

And all I can think about now is…

How much I want that water bottle and the fact that I tipped my driver.