People! 911 is a very busy hotline. It is for emergencies only! In fact there is a law saying you cannot call for any superfluous reasons. This is not the time to be calling over every little thing that just makes you aggravated. The dispatchers have enough on their plate to deal with without our glorified prank calls. Now think before you dial. Are you bleeding? Then call 311 instead.
Redditor u/Parakeetman280 wanted to hear from the Emergency dispatch workers out there. We were hoping they'd share a tale or two about those on the other end of the line by asking.... 911 operators of reddit, what was your stupidest/most annoying call yet?You're a Nurse?
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I had a nurse (she told me twice she was a nurse before we confirmed the address)... anywho, the nurse tells me she's babysitting an infant. So I'm starting to get into baby CPR mode... again, tells me she's a nurse. I ask her what she's reporting: "Well, like I said, I'm babysitting this infant and cutting his finger nails.
I accidentally cut one Tom short and it's bleeding" Did you cut a part of the finger off? "No. It's just bleeding". At this point, I can give some basic bleeding instructions. But we literally sent an ambulance to help a "nurse" apply a bandage.
In Transit
My boyfriend and I used to work at an operating theatre at the guest counter and we'd get calls for directions all the time.
My boyfriend fielded one of these calls one time and was just getting more and more annoyed because the person wanted directions but refused to tell him where they were coming from.
I think they wound up hanging up on him and calling back to complain about him... To him.
Some say they're still in transit today.
Services Not Rendered.
I used to volunteer with my local PD and was helping deliver some goodies to the county dispatch center (figure that's a better introduction then "I'm not a dispatcher, but...") While I was chatting with one of the dispatchers who was taking 911 calls, they received a call from a man who immediately starts yelling at the operator.
Once the man calms down, he explains the situation. Apparently, he had hired a sex worker and brought her to his place. After her services were preformed, he refused to pay her due to him not feeling that she did a good enough job to deserve any financial compensation.
Because she was not reviewing her payment, the sex worker refused to leave the house until she had her money and the man was calling to have her removed from the premises. Long story short, the police were sent to the house and both individuals were arrested after admitting to engaging in their activities. If there is a lesson to be learned here, it's to not call 911 on your hooker.
The Howl
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I got an emergency roadside call about 11pm. Im getting some information and I ask where she's located..."I'm directly beneath the moon. They'll see me." And she hung up.
Just hang up....
The list of stupidity is ridiculous. A few of my favorites:
- Female caller is screaming her absolute head off on picking up the phone. It sounded like her house was on fire and everyone she ever loved was being murdered in front of her eyes. The issue? She had never been in a hailstorm before and it was scary.
- Male 911 caller says he has a question and no emergency. Ok, go ahead. "Yeah so if I'm driving and the speed limit sign says 40 and I'm going 42, is that like....speeding?" ....Yes. "Ok that makes sense, thanks."
- Male caller says his friend accidentally shot himself in the leg in the car. After getting a bunch of info, we go down the medical side of things and I get to the question "is the bleeding serious?" - male, "I can't tell." - ok, is it spurting or pouring out? - "I can't see, I need to take his pants off...BRO DON'T MOVE I NEED TO TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS!" - me, what? No, no with his pants ON, I need you to tell me if he is bleeding! Only time I openly laughed on a 911 call.
I have more!
"hey there's this car on fire!"
I work with a lot of police officers. I got ragged shamelessly for calling in a panic one day and yelling incoherently about a car in a parking lot.
I was driving home and there was an SUV that was on fire at an abandoned gas station but somehow I forgot to tell the dispatcher that the CAR WAS ON FIRE and just kept yelling that the car was dangerous and someone could be killed by this parked car....
...they finally calmed me down enough to ask why it was so dangerous and I was like "what? It's on fire! It could blow up! Or cause a forest fire!" I could hear the dispatcher rolling his eyes as he told me I should've started with "hey there's this car on fire!" versus "I'm at a gas station and there's this parked car." I was 17 or 18, I know better now.
Thaw it Out
I was once called to a woman's house who said she was trapped inside in the middle of winter. I showed up at her home to find that there was a 3 quarter inch of ice stopping her screen door from opening. I opened the door mildly hard and broke the ice to open the screen door.
Not my Issue
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The most recent one was a woman requesting someone respond to adjust her air mattress because she was having difficulty falling asleep.
I had a kid call once on Christmas Eve, upset because his dad wouldn't let him open his gifts early. That one was pretty cute, the dad was embarrassed but it was one of my favorite calls.
Runaway
A woman called from the big city in our area that was about 11 miles away and complained that her 18 year old daughter wouldn't go to school. The operator explained that her daughter was an adult and couldn't be forced to go to school. The mom called back two more times to complain about and and called back a fourth time to say that her daughter had now run away.
EMERGENCY!!
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When I was 3 I called 911 because my toy ball was stolen.
It was awkward when the police came and my parents had to explain the situation.
Lost Faith
My wife has the story of the woman who called because her baby wasn't breathing.
"Ma'am", she says, "How many children are in the house"
"1", the caller replies, "WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME THAT MY BABY ISN'T BREATHING"
"Ma'am, is that crying I hear on the line your baby?"
"YES MY BABY IS CRYING BECAUSE SHE CANNOT BREATHE!!!"
My wife of course had already dispatched the ambulance, but apparently the baby had just been crying for an hour and this woman was convinced the baby could not cry and breath at the same time.
Also, the amount of people who called with an upset stomach was boggling. Like, go take a crap guys.
Her stories about that job really did a number on my faith in humanity.
When you gotta go....
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One time my sister and I were in an argument and I wasn't talking to her. She came home late at night and I happened to be in the bathroom with the door open. All she could see was my feet sticking out as our toilet was sectioned off.
She ended up calling 911, scared as hell that someone had broken into our house and decided to use the bathroom. I went into my room without saying a word. She figured it out moments before the cops arrived. Needless to say, one of the most embarrassing moments of her life.
Thanks OnStar
My mom used to work at the emergency line for OnStar and would often receive reports of suspicious cars, & OnStar would have too notify the police whenever someone would call about that, which makes sense.
However a lot of people would call, "Theres a green car on the highway and it looks suspicious."
No other details than that, and she would have to call the police, too tell them "We got a call about a suspicious green car.
The Scarf
Im not a first responder but i was a security guard at a hospital and we got called in to stop a woman from hanging herself with her scarf. When we got there she was on the floor and the scarf tied onto the seat of a chair.
School is a 911
This is a true store, a kid calling so he could get help on his home work lol.
Lol heard that call. The dispatcher was so nice, he asked him what he needed help with, lol. The mom yelled the kids name in anger when she heard what he was doing. I bet he got a huge lecture. The kid remembered if he needed help to call 911, just forgot the emergency part, lol.
Halloween
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Where do I begin? Halloween night some lady called 911 because she lost her car keys, said she "wasn't sure if she was calling the right number." We've had people call asking for directions, reporting a black teen walking down the street; that person got hung up on. Someone called to report a suspicious vehicle on their street and it turned out to be our police car... which was marked.
I know you....
Not a 911 operator but I have called quite a few times for one stupid reason (it's 999 in the UK but whatever). My phone has a feature where I double tap the lock screen button and it calls 999, and a single tap happens to be snooze for the alarm. Just like anyone else I set an alarm to wake to for my Uni classes everyday and a BUNCH of times I ended up double tapping somehow and the same lady would pickup and I'd tell her it was a mistake. Once she even recognized my voice cuz it happened so often and she cut me off and asked if it was a mistake lol. Luckily she was nice and the calls didn't affect anyone because they lasted only a few seconds.
The Leaves of Evil....
Former 911 operator and the STUPIDEST calls I would get were people complaint about leaf blowers. Yes. I worked in an affluent city and it was always the same pretentious people that called to complain about landscapers their neighbors hired using leaf blowers too early in the morning. It got so bad the city was forced to pass an ordinance restricting the use of leaf blowers before a certain time in the morning.
"frequent flyers"
Most annoying today? Or overall? We routinely deal with the worst side of people and deal with daily/hourly annoying calls.
Some of the worst are the "frequent flyers". Multiple alcoholics in town call regularly for rides home. People calling on their neighbors for literally everything. People treating us like information and being fools when we tell them we aren't.
Think about the worst, most annoying tattle tail you remember from school.... They are worse now that they grew up and they rarely call about actual emergencies.
Madame President
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Not a dispatcher but i work in a jail. This is what we saw on the call notes for a call that came into dispatch recently.
RP lives in insert super expensive neighborhood name
RP saw police car drive by, wants to know whats happening with her people
RP stating she is president of HOA and has legal right to know
RP transferred to deputy.
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For many childhood memories are overrun by living nightmares.
Yes, children are resilient, but that doesn't mean that the things we see as babes don't follow us forever.
The horrors of the world are no stranger to the young.
Redditor -2sweetcaramel- wanted to see who was willing to share about the worst things we've seen as kids, so they asked:
"What’s the creepiest thing you saw as a kid?"
Serious Danger
"Me and my best friend would explore the drainage tunnels under the Vegas area where we grew up. These were miles long and it was always really cool down there so it was a good way to escape the heat of our scorching hot summers. We went into this one that goes under the Fiesta casino and found a camp with a bunch of homeless people."
"Mind you we are like 11 years old lol. And we just kept going like it was nothing. It wasn’t scary then but when I look back at it we could have been in some serious danger. Our parents had no idea we did this or where we were and we had no cellphones. We could have been kidnapped and never have been found."
oofboof2020
Waiting for Food
"I was at a portillos once when I was 12 and I was waiting with my little brother at a booth while my parents got our food. This guy was standing with his tray kind of watching me then after a couple of minutes he started to walk over really fast not breaking eye contact with me."
"He was 2 feet from the table and my dad came out of nowhere and scared the s**t out of him. He looked so surprised and just said he wanted to see if I’d get scared or not. He left his tray full of food near the door and left. My folks reported him but we never went to that location again since we found a better one closer to home."
nowhereboy1964
Captain Hobo to the Rescue
"When I was a pretty young teen, my friends and I were horsing around in San Francisco and started hanging out to smoke with some homeless guys. Another homeless dude came up and began aggressively trying to shake us down for anything (money, smokes, a ride, drugs- all of it) and wouldn’t take no for an answer."
"We got in over our heads and could tell this guy was now riling the other 2 guys up and they were acting like they wanted to jump us. Some grandfather-looking old homeless man appeared out of nowhere and yelled at us to get the f**k out of here- nice kids like us don’t belong down here at this hour!!"
"Captain Hobo saved our lives that night. My parents sincerely thought we were at a mall all day lol."
FartAttack911
Survival
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"I was 7 and survived the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. Witnessed the wave rise way above the already massive palm trees (approx. 40ft?) and my family and I watched/heard the wave crash into the ground from a rooftop."
faithfulpoo
These Tsunami stories are just tragic.
On the Sand
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"We were a group of kids who went to swim in a local lake. And there was a dead body on the beach with their hands raised and their legs bent unnaturally that local police just took out of the same lake. I've never put my foot in these waters again."
oyloff
Be Clever
"I was walking to school and I was about 5 or 6 years old and some guy pulled up beside me in his car and asked if I would get in. He also offered me sweets to do so. I said no. The creepy bit was when he calmly said ‘clever boy’ to me, then drove off. I’ve never even told my parents or anyone else about this as it would most likely freak them out."
OstneyPiz
Bad Jokes
"Dad's side of the family pranked me by burying a fake body on our back property and had me dig it up to find valuables. Was only allowed to use a lantern for light. They stuffed old clothes with chicken bones. Sheetrock mud where the head was... Random fake jewelry as the treasures... I was like maybe 10 or 11.. I remember digging up the boot first and started gagging because it became real at that point."
Alegan239
YOU
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"Woke up to find my little brother staring at me in the dark, asking, Are you really you?"
PrettyLola2004
Siblings can really be a bunch of creepers.
No one should talk to others in the dark though.
Not all pet owners have the same relationship with their pets.
While anyone who decides to become a pet owner, or pet parent as some say, love their pets equally, some never ever let them leave their side.
Taking their pet with them to work, running errands, even on vacations.
Many pet parents even allow their pets to share their bed with them when going to sleep.
For others though, this is where a line is finally drawn.
Redditor Piggythelavasurfer was curious to hear whether pet owners allowed their pets to share their bed with them, as well as the reasons why they do/don't, leading them to ask:
"Do you let your pet sleep in your bed? Why/why not?"
The Tiny Issue Of Water...
"Absolutely not."
"I have fish."- Senior-Meal3649
Everyone Gets Lonely Eventually...
"I adopted an eleven year old cat the day before Halloween."
"She has mostly lived in my closet since I got her, and she hasn’t been too interested in coming out."
"Last night, she came out of my closet and jumped up on my bed, and crawled under my covers and curled up by my feet to sleep."
"I was so happy!"- YellowBeastJeep
The Comforting Reminder That You're Not Alone...
"I recently lost my Greyhound but I used to let him sleep on my bed with me."
"The company was nice and he was no trouble to have on my bed."- HoodedMenace3
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What Do You Mean Allow?
"I have no choice."
"She is a cat, cats do whatever they want."- Small_cat1412
"He lets me sleep in my bed."- Poorly-Drawn-Beagle
Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way
"I carry my old boy upstairs to bed every night."- worst_in_show
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Who Needs An Alarm Clock?
"I let my two cats sleep with me."
"They're so full of love and just want cuddles all the time."
"And so do I."
"We've all developed a lil routine."
"Get to bed, oldest sleeps on my feet to keep them warm, youngest lies in my arm while I lie on my side (she the little spoon), then when I snooze my alarm for work in the morning the youngest paws at my face and meeps loudly to wake me up."- GhostofaFlea_
Whose Bed Is It Anyway?
"Yes."
"They're also kind enough to let me squeeze into whatever space they've left for me."
"Although I do get a few dirty looks off them."- Therealkaylor
"I found this tiny kitten screaming her head off under a car."
"Would not come out."
"Got some food and some water in dishes."
"I stood by the tire so she couldn't see my feet."
"She got curious about the food and water and started gobbling it down."
"I thought she would bolt when I squatted down."
"She was too busy eating."
"I grabbed her by the nape of the neck and all four legs went straight out and she tried to scratch me to death."
"I got her in the door and tossed her toward the couch."
"She ricocheted off the couch as if she was a ping pong off a table and I lost sight of her."
"I put out food and water and a sandbox and did not see that kitten for three days."
"On the third day, I came home and she was on my bed pillow."
"I thought she would bolt when I came near, but she didn't."
"I wanted to sleep so I tried to scoot her little butt off my pillow."
"She would not go."
"I put my head down to sleep and that is the way it was from then on."
"She ran the roost."- Logical_Cherry_7588
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Sleeping Is A Prerequisite...
"No, he's a cat and he cannot keep still during the night."
"He walks across the headboard, opens the closet doors, jumps into the windows and rustles the blinds, etc."
"If he would sleep he could stay, but alas, he's a ramblin' man."- Spong_Durnflungle
Saying No Just Isn't An Option...
"'Let'."
"Lol."
"It's a cat's world and I'm happy to be on her good side."- milaren
Felines Only!
"The cat does, the dog doesn't and the horse certainly does not either."- Xcrowzz
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Is That My Hair On That Pillow?
"My dog is perfect."
"She comes up, cuddles til we start to fall asleep, then gets down to sleep on her bed so she doesn't get too hot."
"Jumps back up in the early morning for wake up cuddles."
"The hair everywhere is the only downside but she is so cozy, what can you do."- HoodieWinchester
It is easy to understand how some people are able to fall asleep more easily knowing their friend and protector is there, in bed, with them.
Though we can't blame others who don't want to run the risk of being scratched or bitten in the middle of the night either...