About six months ago, I had a layover in Houston. After deplaning and going through security, I realized my headphones had fallen out of my pocket. I submitted the lost item claim with United and gave the description of the color of the silicon case they had on them, plane info, seat number, the whole thing. I also set it to lost mode and included my phone number to call me. I emailed United a few times, stating I could see they had moved from the plane to what seemed to be the United office space. I now realize, it was probably employee lockers.

After about 24 hours, I saw them go to an apartment building. I watched them go from the apartment building to the airport, back and forth, and tracked the schedule. I gave United the address of the employee, their schedule, and what days they had worked. Surely the home address and schedule was enough to pinpoint who it was, so they could at least deal with it internally. Wasn’t exactly excited to get the AirPods back if they had been wearing them.

United told me that because the AirPods had left the property, they wouldn’t do anything and I had to file a police report with Houston PD. I live in Arizona. They closed my claim.

I use “find my” a lot for various AirTags and things. So, for the last few months, whenever I see my lost headphones with the earbuds out, I hit “play sound” on the earbud and blast the wearer’s ears out. I see them quickly go back into the case.

If they would have called me when they found them, I happily would have sent them a reward, even enough to buy their own basic pair. I understand they are expensive and not everyone can swing a pair.

I am slowly working toward making them go deaf, so no one else loses a set of headphones to them. I think this is the pettiest thing I’ve ever done…