Apparently, some people missed the lesson about how calling 911 should be reserved only for absolute emergencies.
There are apparently plenty of adults out here thinking the 911 line is a much more casual source for help. These people call for offhand questions, minor gripes with a neighbor, even just a touch personal decision.
Don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with reaching out for help. But maybe don't clog up the emergency line.
After all, what if a pressing issue cropped up at the exact same moment?
Redditor Atoms_Apple asked:
"What is the pettiest reason someone has called 911?"
Many people decide to call 911 when they're in a logistical jam. Quick PSA: the ambulance is not a free taxi.
The Jig's Up
"Not a dispatcher but when I was in EMS we were dispatched to a psych call. When we got there this lady was standing out side her house ready to go to the hospital."
"On the way to the hospital I was talking to her and trying to get her vitals when she told me there was nothing wrong with her that she heard a family member was in the hospital and needed a ride, so she called 911. Cops met us at the hospital for her."
Direct Line
"I work for small police station but once had 911 put through a caller who then requested that I patch them through to a pizza place so they could order pizza from a 911 only cellphone..."
-- vtphoenix22
Here's Good
"I've been called to make a bed."
"Another one of my units was called to a drunk guy at a bar for 'trouble breathing' said he was looking for a ride into the city. Almost to the hospital he refused care and transport and got out and went where he wanted to go. It's endless"
A Free Show
"I had a guy call 911 just because he wanted to see fire trucks and ambulances with lights and sirens. He miscalculated."
"There was a cop too...and he was not amused. Dude spent the night in jail."
Priorities of That Age
"I tutored a 2nd grader many years ago for extra money. There was some assignment where the question was about when it is okay to call 911 and the kid (seriously) told me that it's you forgot to bring your homework to school."
-- BlueGrotta
Some people just ask for information. It's startling, especially given that the internet has way more information than the poor worker on the other end of the phone line.
An Eye for Design
"I received a call on the non emergency line from a 90-something year old lady asking me what lamp she should put in her bedroom. I told her I did not understand and that the sheriff's office was not the correct place to ask."
"Eventually she got upset and said 'Fine I'll call 911, they'll help me there!' I tried to tell her that 911 would just go back to me and it was a misuse of an emergency line, but it was too late."
"15 seconds later 911 rings, I answer and lo and behold it was the lady asking 'what lamp should I get for my bedroom?' "
Parents Explain Why They Regret The Name They Gave Their Child | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Seasonal Emergency
"Not me, but a close family friend worked taking 911 calls for years. She said the number of calls they get about how to cook turkeys at Thanksgiving time is just baffling."
Eyes in the Sky
"To complain we had the road closed. Then asked when it would open. Then asked if they could squeeze through. No, you can't."
-- leg00b
And some people call 911 when they can handle the rage they feel. Unfortunately, many adults can't seem to work out their differences, so they bring in the big guns.
Well, Not Always Adults
"A classmate of mine in 6th grade called 911 because he lost to his sister in Hungry Hungry Hippoes" -- Ok_Entrepreneur_6942
"I didn't see the 'to' before 'his sister' and I thought it was an extremely high stakes game of Hungry Hungry Hippos" -- Disastrous_Toe_Jam
A Cherished Phone
"8 or 9 years ago, my husband and I had a couple of acquaintances over for dinner one night. They were from our local poker group."
"The 4 of us were having a great time when one of the guys accidentally knocked over the other guy's phone and cracked its screen."
"The second guy went mental. He started yelling at the first guy and demanded that he pay to repair the screen. The second guy agreed to it but the first guy kept yelling and yelling. He called 911 and the cops came."
"He told the cops that the second guy broke his phone and he wanted to file a police report. He asked the cops to force the second guy to give him money to repair his phone. The cops were so confused and annoyed. We were mortified because it happened at our house and the cops knew our landlord."
"We never invited him to our house again."
A Laundry List of Rage
"People who get cut off in traffic are probably the worst inane callers. Like, 'Oh so this happened three hours ago, you don't remember the road it happened on, you don't know the registration of the VOI, there was no traffic crash, and there is not even the insinuation that either party involved were under influence of substances?' "
"Noise complaints are similar."
"People calling the emergency line to complain about being arrested earlier (one once complaining about being charged for abusing the emergency line)."
"I've had a woman call emergency because their sister was refusing to share their food, at a cinema."
"But what is probably more insane is the serious incidents that are started by inane and petty things - once had a serious FDV between a mother and daughter - the mother stabbed the daughter after an argument over the colour of cupcake batter."
Some People Just Love Conflict
"I once had the cops called on me by my neighbor. There was a car parked on the street by his backyard. Not blocking his parking space in front of his house, not on his property, not inconveniencing him in any way. It was not my car or that of anybody I knew."
"Same neighbor called the cops on me for animal abuse. My dog was in my fenced in backyard with a bowl of food and a bucket of water in the shade. Told the cops I chained him up all day and night with no food. I showed the cops the pup and was just like why would I chain up a dog in a fenced in yard?"
"Same neighbor called the cops on me for 'verbal assault' when he knocked on my door and said it was against the law to leave my trash can by the road a day after pick up and I told him to f**k off and closed the door."
"The weird thing is I never did anything to the guy to get him to start this and from what I asked the other neighbors he didn't do that to them."
Food-Themed Spats
"There's too many."
"I once got a call from a family of frequent flyers… a husband's wife ordered the wrong topping on a pizza, so they got in an argument and then she threw a ham sandwich at his head."
"Another time a call came from a woman who just got out of church and the drivethru to KFC was too long… and she wanted an officer to come out and help … 🤦🏻♀️"
"Fun times …"
-- karalynn1982
At Her Own Risk
"Not an operator, but a female customer once called the cops on my coworkers for scaring her too much."
"We work at a haunted house..."
Kept Trying
"When I was 5 I called 911 because my mom threw away some leftover McDonald's fries I had saved from the day before."
"When I was 4 I called 911 because my mom threw away some old toys of mine."
"Damn cops didn't arrest her either time 🤣"
Thankfully, these are the worst of the worst. Here's hoping 911 operators are usually able to focus on what matters.
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*The following article contains discussion of suicide/self-harm.
When we think of life-saving medical maneuvers, surgeons and paramedics usually come to mind. We picture frantic CPR, 14-hour surgeries, and those electric things that pulse people back to life.
But 911 operators are massively important to the life-saving equation too.
They're the first ones we talk to in the midst of emergency. They're tasked with retrieving information, calming us down, and arranging the appropriate logistics to allow those more traditional first aid images to occur at all.
And on top of all of that, those operators go through so much. They have to hear some of the most depressing, alarming, gruesome details and maintian composure in the face of it all.
Then, hours, days, or even years later, they process all they heard.
According to a recent Reddit thread, all that processing can take a toll.
layyschipss06 asked, "911 operators of Reddit, what is a call that keeps you up at night?"
Many heard the intimate details surrounding someone's decision to take their own life. These operators were on the phone when those tragic discoveries were first made by a loved one.
That Scream
"I'm a firefighter and I overheard a call on the radio from another unit. They were dispatched to a possible suicide. The information given while the crews were en route was 'patient's wife came home and found a note on the the door saying 'honey I'm already gone if your reading this please do not come in and see me like this' ' "
"The crews arrived and the next thing you hear on the radio was the paramedic telling dispatch 'code 4' (meaning patient is deceased) and in the background you can hear the wife screaming bloody murder as loud as she could. It was chilling"
-- 09inchmales
No Words
"1 am and the phone rings and I pick up to hear a man screaming on the other end. No words. Just screaming."
"Finally get him to tell me what happened and he told me he heard a gun shot in his house and went to see what happened and found his brother in his room. He had shot himself."
-- New-Key-9377
Christmas, Forever Associated
"Worst call I got was when I worked overtime on Christmas Day and got a call from a father who returned from a business trip and found his 19 year old son hanging in the bedroom."
"Haunts me until today."
Other people struggled most with the calls that involved the deaths of young children or the tragic futures of kids just as young. Whether by accident or on purpose, some times the tragedy of a life cut short is a reality we have to encounter.
Just Trying to Help
"I had a witness to a fatal motorcycle collision on the phone with me and he goes 'someone's crossing the road to help OH MY GOD SHE JUST GOT HIT BY A CAR, SHE'S DEAD TOO!' And he just screamed and screamed and hung up."
"An off-duty nurse who stopped to help the motorcycle rider was hit by another car and killed. It was on the news later and I found out she had a husband and two very young kids. I was on worker's comp for about 3 weeks while I recovered from that one."
Nothing For Her to See
"I got a 911 call about a vehicle that ran off the road. The caller told me that the female driver was unconscious but had a pulse. He then proceeded to tell me that the passenger was a fatal. I asked if he had checked for a pulse at which point he told me no."
"It was a young child that had been decapitated. I asked him to find anything he could to cover the child because I didn't want the mother to regain consciousness and have that be the last image she had of her child."
Imagine Hearing That
"My aunt listened to a 12-year old girl and her friend get murdered by her dad. She hasn't been the same since."
"The girl's mother killed him that night. She was just recently let off with no charges--they were gonna charge her for murder."
-- umbrellawand
Sudden and Unknown
"Dispatched about 20 years ago. My last 911 call was. Mom coming home from work at 11 am and couldn't wake baby."
"Baby died from SIDS."
Others talked about when logistics got screwed up for some reason or another. The guilt they felt in those moments was unbearable.
A Fatal Oversight
"It was 9:30am. I'd been on shift since 7am. All the ambulances had checked in for morning mileage and radio checks. All was good."
"Call comes in on the emergency line. 'MY SON IS NOT BREATHING.' "
"Ok, we got this. Start going through the steps of checking for a pulse/breath while dispatching the closest ambulance."
"I'm almost to the part where we start CPR when the ambulance calls back 'Dispatch, our rig is dead.' YOU GOT TO BE FU**ING KIDDING ME. YOU CALLED IN THIS MORNING WITH A RADIO CHECK. DID YOU NOT CHECK YOUR GOD DAMN AMBULANCE?"
"Nearest ambulance is ONE WHOLE COUNTY OVER. 30 minutes. 30 minutes for a situation that needs IMMEDIATE medical intervention."
"The mother is screaming on the phone, crying. The sister comes in and starts screaming the name of her brother."
"I have to tell them the ETA for an ambulance is 30 minutes."
"It's been almost 10 years since I was in EMS Dispatch and I occasionally wake up in a cold sweat thinking about that call."
Time to Go
"About 9 at night a woman calls calmly asking for an ambulance as her husband had passed out. After 10+ minutes of trying to get London Ambulance to answer the phone, she hangs up. I stay on the line and another 10 minutes later they answer, I relay the situation and address and they confirm they'll do a drive-by (basically get the nearest available unit to visit the property - see what's happening)."
"Half an hour later the same woman calls back, exact same reason for calling, once again I'm on hold for London ambulance to answer for 10+ minutes, out of the blue she comes onto the phone and calmly says 'don't bother, he's just died' and puts the phone down again, this time it doesn't disconnect and I hear the most heart-wrenching wail of despair from the same woman, she then goes into a teary rant about how useless everything is and how London Ambulance killed her husband, before the line cuts off again."
"Get through to the ambulance service, explain everything and the operator confirms the drive-by got cancelled because the ambulance it was assigned to had finished their shift."
"I didn't sleep that night and cried more tears than I ever had done previously. Next day I went into the office an hour before my shift was set to start, emptied my locker, gave all my work stuff to my boss and quit on the spot."
-- UncleSeph
Felt Like Eternity
"Doesn't keep me up at night but I do think about it time to time. Had a daughter call in for her elderly mother experiencing chest pains. 10 minutes pass and I call for an eta. They tell me they're there. The daughter gave me the wrong address they had recently moved and she gave the old address."
"The chest pains turned to trouble breathing. Eta 10 minutes. Mother isn't responding. Daughter is crying over the line. Paramedics arrive perform cpr and even use the defibrillator. Sadly she didn't make it. I heard all this over the phone at the time it hit me a bit hard but you get over it."
-- Judge_Open
In response to a list like this, all we can say is thank you. Thank you to all those involved in life-saving responses to the emergencies that strike us.
And a special thanks to the 911 operators who hear it all and still do what they need to help us stay safe.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/The stress and trauma that a dispatcher's job comes with are insurmountable and deserve a lot of respect.
Some of the calls they get can be life-changing, not just for the people involved, but also the dispatchers themselves.
Redditor King_bob992 asked:
"Emergency service dispatchers, what is the scariest call you have ever gotten?"
You're definitely in the right profession.
"One of the first calls I ever took. Woman calls up and asks about the process of filing a restraining order. She discusses how her boyfriend has been abusive and controlling. Mid conversation the doorbell rings, she puts me on hold opens the door and I hear yelling."
"Guy barges in and starts beating on her and I'm sitting there helpless listening, because I didn't have her address yet. Luckily, I did have her name and within a few minutes we got her address and got help to her. She was pretty badly injured but lived, and he is still in jail."
"That call made me doubt myself and if I was in the right profession, but I stuck with it and it has been a very rewarding (though sometimes sad) profession."
Scary stuff.
"Not a dispatcher but a paramedic. But a man called, saying his mom had severe chest pains. So we head over to their address in a hurry. However, there was no mom, just the caller waiting for us and then robbing us at gun point saying be were going to kill us. He just wanted the drugs, but was quite shocking still."
"Always going through my mind when entering some shady neighbourhood."
GiphyThat's so heartbreaking.
"I work for a sheriff's office and a good friend of mine was a dispatcher. I stepped outside one day for a smoke and my buddy was standing there shaking and crying. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he had just dispatched a call for his best friend."
"His friend was a former army sniper and had only been out for a few months. He was a volunteer fire fighter and was responding to a house fire, rolled the truck, and had beed decapitated. Guy had 5 young daughters."
fryamtheeggguy
A miracle.
"Call came in and was flagged as a frequent caller on the a** end of a very rural county. The dude was just screaming. We couldn't make out anything he was saying but we had his address and sent every available unit we had. After a while the screaming started to die down and his breathing got very labored. He wouldn't talk to us but he just kept muttering. After a few minutes we realized he was praying."
"Few minutes later deputy arrived on scene. Heard him check in on scene and also heard him on the line. First noise I heard was him vomiting. Turned out the dude had been working on his car and the lift collapsed. The guy wasn't under the car but was between it and a tree when the car started rolling. He was impaled on a branch and pinned between the tree and car."
"Dude lived. He's a quadriplegic but he's alive. First legit 911 call he ever made and everyone took their sweet time getting there because it was usually nonsense."
hatchethates84
Ouch.
"I am a emergency helicopter dispatcher so I get calls from EMS in rural areas. First question I always ask is, 'what is the closest city to the scene?' I swear 80% of these people do not know how to pronounce it correctly and 50% of them do not know how to spell it."
"One time this guy cut his d**k off on bath salts. When he came too he realized what he did and called us directly."
GiphyHow tragic.
"I worked as a jailer for a while after getting out of the Marines. We had a dispatcher who had 2 kids. Both boys one a POS that was always in jail the other younger troubled and riding a dangerous line. She got the call one night that her younger son got shot twice in a drug deal gone wrong at a public park where he was playing ball."
"He was dead before the helicopter got in the air most likely. The dispatch center was connected to the jail where she had to work less than 50 yards from the man who shot her son. She was pretty tore up."
Patrocitus
Chilling.
"Not EMS, but work for a domestic violence shelter that offers sexual assault services. Will never forget talking to this one woman, and her husband came home during the call and she must have dropped the phone in the process but then I could just hear her screaming and him yelling. That will stay with me forever I'm sure. I really wish we had been able to get her help before that happened. That is the worst call I've had. But I find it so hard when children call, just always breaks my heart."
cshpolysci29
Good for them for not pushing themselves.
"When I was younger, I applied to be a 911 operator for the city I was living in northern California. I got through most of their tests and interviews, which there were numerous. The pool of applicants was over 200 for about 8 positions. I got down to the last dozen applicants then they played some recordings for us."
"The recording I listened to was a young girl calling 911 from inside a closet. She was crying and hysterical saying that her dad was in the house with a gun and was going to kill her mom. You could hear the mother screaming in the background and the operator was really calm and collected. She got the little girl to keep her voice down and whisper and tried to keep her on the line. You could hear the gunshots in the background."
"I couldn't listen to it anymore. I didn't want to find out what happened next, so I don't know the outcome. I knew I couldn't handle that then. I don't think I could take something like that now."
huexolotl
GiphyHorrifying.
"There was an accident once on a somewhat busy state road here. An older couple in an suv pulled out onto the road without seeing a motorcyclist that was going well over 100 mph. He rear ended them, died instantly and plowed through the suv, landing halfway through the windshield. The suv flipped a couple times and landed on the passenger side, trapping the wife. Then it caught on fire."
"At my dispatch center we had 3 of us working at all times, and I don't even know how many 911 calls we instantly got when this happened. Dozens, I'm sure. After I sent the FD and they got on the way(this is a rural area and this intersection was probably a good ten minutes south of them), some bystanders managed to get the husband out of the suv but he died in the helicopter on the way to the hospital, I believe. The wife burned alive."
"Honestly the worst part was right after I dispatched the FD, one of the lieutenants on the biggest police department in my county happened to be driving through there with his family and he called 911. I'll never forget how panicked and frantic he was on that call. I had never heard any of our officers like that before, let alone one of the administrators. We were pretty friendly with all of them so it shook me up. After I hung up with him I just started sobbing."
nillah
The strength it must take to move past that...
"My sister works as a dispatcher. Her first week on the job, she had a man call in, saying he was going to kill himself. He told her that she couldn't do anything to change his mind; he was simply trying to let her know where he could be found. She heard the gunshot through the call."
"Second one, she had a little girl call in because her dad was unresponsive. She knew that CPR would likely save this man, but the daughter wasn't grown enough and didn't have the strength to perform it effectively. My sister had to tell her to leave the room, because the longer that girl stayed in there trying fruitlessly to save her father, the more scarred she would become by the experience of watching her father die."
m4cktheknife
Both are horrifying.
"Former 000 calltaker reporting in. Scariest one would have to be one of the very first calls I took while I was training. A young man rang up and it was evident from his voice that he was in shock. His exact words were 'I've just hit a motorbike rider who was coming around a blind bend on the wrong side of the road. I think I've killed him.'"
"From dealing with a few noise complaints to a car accident with a possible fatality was a massive switch, and this was only my second shift taking calls in training. The motorbike rider did not survive that accident."
Giphy"Second scariest would be when someone was working down a well and was overcome by generator fumes. His wife tried to rescue him but she fell off the ladder, injured herself as a result and was unable to help her husband. So there's one possibly dead male in the well and his wife is in danger of dying as well. And all of this is in a remote location that I am completely unfamiliar with. We didn't save the male. We did, however, manage to save his wife."
dexbydesign89
That's terrible.
"My answer from a similar thread:"
"The one that always sticks with me was the time I had to tell a father how to cut his 15 year old son down after he had hung himself. He was actively reciting reasons why he may have been a bad parent while doing it. I'll remember that until the day I die."
FireAlarmOp
Holy s**t.
"Obligatory posting on behalf of my mom. She answered 000 police emergency calls (Australian 911). The top two: A woman phoned up. She had a restraining order on her ex-husband, had come home to furniture moved positions inside the house."
"Whilst checking rooms she noticed handprints on the wall leading up to the roof cavity access point. This was slightly ajar. Mom tells her to leave. Woman decides nope, she's Dora the explorer and gets a chair. She stands on it, starts to lift the cover and it gets slammed back down. Yep, hubby in the roof. He'd been there a while (days)."
"2nd: a call comes in from a remote outback community. Someone's using a machete to stab their way into a door while laughing maniacally. There are no street addresses or house numbers to ID the location and the caller cannot give a location. Nearest police are 2 hours away. Mom just heard screaming, then gurgling, then silence then whistling."
ottersrus
Super anxiety-inducing.
"I was working at a small agency during a storm. We would work 1 person in dispatch per shift, as it was pretty common to go an entire overnight shift without a single call. The local hospital called and said 'A tornado just hit the hospital.' Turns out, the tornado dropped directly on top of the hospital, moves across the street to the college dorms and destroyed at least one of them. There must have been multiple 'naders because all of our phone lines lit up and everyone was saying a tornado just hit their house."
Giphy"The town close by had a couple fires, our paging system went down (meaning no paging out our volunteer fire guys, 3 officers in total for the entire f**king county, and all of our medics tied up at the hospital."
"The calls would go like this: 'Are you injured? Do you feel safe enough to drive yourself to the hospital?' If they said yes, I'd tell them to make their way to the staging area at the hospital, if no, I had to write it down and have one of the other agencies sending help to check on them."
"Luckily the college was on an extended weekend so hardly anyone was in the dorms. I still have anxiety issues when I'm at work when a storm hits."
Don't do drugs.
"My dad's friend got a call from a man who claimed there was an alien in his stomach. When they got to him they discovered he cut his own stomach open and took his insides outside. The knife was lying in his flesh next to the body. The man was high on some drugs."
lubie_chlebek
Too Sad
"A 3 year old was at a campground with her family and they let her out of their sight for 20 seconds and she wandered down to a creek and drowned. Her mom found her and her father called in. While I was getting details from the understandable distraught father, a random guy camping there was doing CPR managed to resuscitate her. I can't imagine how her parents felt, but it was like physical weight being lifted off of me."
crathis
Pain in the moment...
"Was a 911 operator for 10 years. Scariest is probably different than worst. My scariest was an active shooter in a high rise. Just sitting on the line trying to give the best directions so every one makes it out okay."
"When I first started out, I worked for a rural county and some areas were very far from help. One night I got a call from a group of people who were in a3m accident and their car caught fire. The girl I was speaking with was stuck in her seatbelt and as the fire spread she was in terrible amounts of pain."
"She kept begging me to send help and I was but it was far away. I stayed with her until the phone dropped (assumingly the phone and it melted or malfunctioned). The other was a hanging."
"The father called me for a welfare check and I was putting in the call when he got to the house. He said the door was unlocked, so I stayed landline while he went inside and he found his son. The pain in the moment he walked out and told his wife was so horrible and raw."
allaboutthatpuc
Terror
"I think the most genuine terror comes from child callers. I had this 5 year old call in that her dad was growling and wouldn't wake up. Ok agonal breathing, probably a heart attack scrambling to get a confirmed address for ems, pd dispatched to unconfirmed address."
"Finally confirm the address and start giving directions on CPR. Nope she will not touch him because she is scared then bursts into tears. Luckily pd arrived just after she refused and they were able to do CPR until EMS arrived."
oneofthesesigns
CPR instructions and he kept screaming...
"911 dispatcher here for a large city. I get a little bit of everything and mostly it's BS. But one that stuck with me was something recently. A man called in frantic and it was really hard to get him to calm down. He told me his 35 year old girlfriend was unresponsive and not breathing."
Season 5 Nbc GIF by The OfficeGiphy"I immediately started giving this guy CPR instructions and he kept screaming 'I'm sorry I'm sorry my love.' Tough morning for the guy no doubt. It hit me that he could have been responsible or the last thing he ever said to her was not pleasant. Never followed up on the call. In this line of work, it's on to the next one."
"Too busy to think about it. I have millions of people depending on me not to let the last call effect the next one. I don't know what happened other than she was a DOA. Didn't hit me until the next day. My God, that scream was deafening. All i know is there was more to the story, I could hear it in his voice."
"P.S. I've heard people shot in real time, parents trying to revive their dead kids first thing in the morning, but this for some reason hit me."
.DNastythenasty
On the Roof
"There's a guy up here on the roof. He was wandering around in a daze and not responding to me. He's got his shirt off and he's sitting on top of the parking garage with his legs over the edge and he's rocking back and forth. He's covered in blood."
"Vehicle pursuits aren't fun either."
Dr_Frasier_Bane
On the Porch
"Heard this story from a cop I knew. Guy calmly calls 911 to report a man standing on his front porch with a shotgun. Police arrive at the address provided to find a man in his 50s standing on the porch as described in the call. They take cover and prepare to shoot if man decides to open fire. Man points gun to his own face, cops realize what was going on, but it happened too quickly for them to intervene. That man on the porch was the one who called."
the_one_with_no_face
scared famous smile GIF by VH1GiphyDispatchers seriously aren't paid enough.
Do you have any experiences to add? Let us know in the comments below.