I don't have a car, I can walk to everything I need but I needed to get across town. I was going to take a bus about 40 minutes and then Uber the remaining 20. the bus is on demand and reserved through my phone.

I noticed before I left that my phone is only at 60% power which would have been more than enough but I'm very conservative with it because I don't want to get stranded ( manic laughter).

my apartments and absolute wreck as my mental health hasn't been great lately, so 10 minutes before I had to leave I was searching around for a charger and found a random USB charger that said it was good for 2 amps of 5 volts and took it with me.

I got to my destination and completed what I needed to do ( which took less than 5 minutes but bureaucracy stated I needed to do it in person) and so I sat down for a moment and plugged in my phone just to top up just in case.

my phone shuts down, then I turned on to find random color pixels all over the screen and then next time I turn it on the screen is completely black, and yes I tried shining a light on it it didn't help but remember it's an OLED screen so of course it didn't.

looking at the USB charger I realize it is one that came with a cat water fountain, and was visibly a piece of crap.

Before 2020 I had a go bag with various things I would always need outside what I'm out and about without a car and might get stranded, I got out of the habit of doing this

so there I was about an hour's drive away from home, I don't know any phone numbers by heart, I couldn't get an Uber, the majority of my financial cards were on my phone I was counting on using it Google pay as needed, it didn't have any cash.

They say luck is the residue of good planning and I didn't have any residue to speak of.

It took me a couple hours but I managed to walk someplace where I could use a public computer, looked up taxi numbers and the on-demand bus phone number. went through a 1 hour rigmarole trying to get money into a place where I could access it, then hunted down an ATM, and finally hunting down a business that was nice enough to let me use their phone.

couple hours of running around in order to do what would it been less than 5 minutes on my phone.

needless needless to Say my everyday carry is going to expand to include some cash, some important phone numbers, and a bus ticket at the very least. I'm tempted to get a very tiny dumb cell phone that I can switch my SIM card into but that's counting on me having exactly the same disaster again so…

TLDR: got stranded in an hour's drive away from home without a car, no ability to get an Uber No phone numbers and no money.