I have to admit the last time I called 911... it was a non-emergency. But my roommate and I didn't know that. It was Halloween and a massive "something" slammed against our door. When we opened it the "something" was gone. Then all of a sudden I heard screaming and gunshots. And... I smelled an immense amount of pot. Turns out the massive something was our alcoholic neighbor who visited the roof and feel down the stairs on the way back. He quickly picked himself up and hurried off before we could catch him. The gunshots and screaming were our downstairs neighbors watching "Scarface." Their sound system is state of the art. I told the police someone had been murdered. So you can imagine how thrilled the neighbors --who were innocently watching a movie and smoking copious amounts of pot-- felt when answering the door to detectives at 2am. We all had a good laugh about it later. Well, my roommate and I did. The neighbors who give me side eye. I think the people on this chain can sympathize with my mistake.
Good Luck Goldilocks...
summer sunglasses GIF by Topshelf RecordsGiphyWell, I once sprayed myself in the eyes with bear spray as a kid and wound up calling the fire department. My initial perception was that you put bear spray on yourself, not the bear. It was an incredibly rude awakening. The fire department got a good laugh about it while I vigorously poured water into my eyes as I continued to cry. Makes for a good story now though.
Not my Legos...
A kid called 911 because he wanted us to come arrest his brother for not sharing the legos from the lego bin.
You see, they were supposed to share, but his brother wasn't sharing. The caller's mom even told his brother to share, but alas, the brother declined. The bin had enough legos for both of them, but the caller's brother said that he was playing with all of the legos. This wasn't reasonable to our caller. There were too many legos for one person to play with at the same time. Therefore, our caller's brother was a liar, a turd, and he definitely wasn't sharing and Mom said he had to share so we needed to come arrest him.
While hilarious, we wanted to do a quick check to make sure there wasn't something else going on. We had a high degree of confidence that this wasn't a coded request for help, so we asked to speak to an adult. After confirming that there was no actual emergency, we ended the call and recommended no action.
Share your legos, kids.
Nana's Phone
My cousin was learning about emergency numbers. She stole my nana's phone, ran to my nana's room, gathered my siblings and called 911. Of course someone answered and she flipped out. She immediately hung up without saying something. The operator calls back but nobody answers. 10 minutes later, the police arrive. They said that they got a phone call from this location.
My cousin immediately starts wailing in the background. My nan'a calls for one of my siblings who tells her that it was my cousin who called because she wanted to see if anyone would answer. My nana apologizes and the police start laughing, saying that it happens all the time.
Sometimes kids are adorable. The next group of people just found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who hasn't right? More often than not, lonely people will try to find connection anywhere and everywhere, like an ER at night, so once and awhile we innocently find ourselves as accomplices in a stranger's story. And some of us just get stuck due to our own malfunctions.
Just Visiting?
Former er nurse here. My absolute worst was a lady who called 911, claiming she couldn't breathe.
She had a pimple on the inside of her nose and it hurt to breathe through her nose. I rubbed some bacitracin on her pimple, gave her a bus pass, which she refused, demanded a cab voucher, accused me of calling her poor, then called an Uber.
Super strange encounter.
I need to be BALED out...
Obligatory not a first responder... but the dumb caller. Climbed up into the hayloft of my barn, and while I was moving bales around I accidentally jammed the door to the ladder closed. I didn't have any tools with me to wedge it open, and I couldn't pry it up with my fingers. But I had my cell phone with me, I always bring my cell to the barn. None of my neighbors answered their phones, so... yeah.
"911, I'm stuck in my barn. Can you send someone to climb up the ladder and open the door?"
The worst part? I work in the hospital. I KNEW every single person (and they sent two cop cars and a fire engine for some bizarre reason) that showed up at my house. To this day, I've yet to live it down.
Can I hitch a Ride?
Got a call for chest pains, patient gave a really generic story, got to the hospital and when the triage nurse asked what was wrong I start telling her about the patient's pain. The patient cut me off to explain she wasn't having chest pain, she just wanted a ride to the hospital because she liked the socks she got in the emergency room last time she was there and would like another pair.
Who can't help but be frantic when things we hold near and dear go missing. I have a small, black dachshund, her name is Juliet. Over the course of our ten years together she has sent me into panic mode several times. She either is doing it innocently or she 's the devil. (Still so cute either way) Every once and awhile she'll hide. The problem is she is compact and easy to miss in poorly lit spaces. More than once I've torn my apartment apart in search of her, only to find her asleep in my laundry. One time I was sure she was taken from my open window. So I called the police, right before they arrived, I turned around to find her staring at me form under a pillow. I believe with a smirk. There were no treats that evening.
Quack
Elderly lady calls and reports that out of her 200 ducks, 3 were just stolen.
Arrived to see an enormous mass of ever moving ducks and elderly lady says, "See there's 3 missing, just count them." Needless to say, you could count to about 10 ducks at most before you lost track of the ducks that were either counted or uncounted.
Me Again...
Not a first responder but my previous phone had a virus and would randomly call emergency services twice a night while I was using it. Few times I couldn't disconnect in time and would awkwardly tell the responder it was a mistake. I still feel bad for wasting their time.
Cruella?
101 dalmatians GIFGiphyYoung couple calls and reports that out of their 17 dalmatians, 15 were just stolen.
There wasn't much SY could do besides put up adverts in all the papers. After a rather unorthodox escape by the dogs themselves, an officer arrived for a followup to see an enormous mass of ever moving dalmatians - many more than the original 17 - and the young husband exclaims, "It's a dalmatian plantation!" Needless to say, you could count to about 10 dalmatians at most before you lost track of the dalmatians that were either counted or uncounted.
Hot Water
olaf GIFGiphyLocal lady made the news for calling emergency services because her snowman was stolen.
Guys and gals, let's all save emergency response for emergencies. Can you imagine a "please hold" response while someone is breaking into your home so that the person hogging up the line can get a police escort for a missing Scooby-Doo sweater. (Yes I've lost mine before) When in panic mode... stop, breathe, assess then choose action. Calmly. Call 311. Or learn your local non-emergency number.
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Reddit user u/cmdrrockawesome asked :
"People who've worked for scam call centers, did you know? And if you did and stayed, why?"
10.
GiphyWorked at one place when I was 19 or so that did public radio pledge renewals. Turned out the boss wasn't actually giving that money to anyone, just kept it. Bunch of suits and uniforms showed up and arrested him, shut the company down in the middle of the work day. No idea if he was ever convicted or what might have happened to him afterward.
9.
You're desperate for a job. They call you and it seems legit enough. You go through training and its fun, the people in your training class are all pretty cool, the managers make you feel special ,you think you might actually like this. Then it happens you get on the phone, first real day of work and after the 5th person hangs up you realize that you are one of THOSE people. How did I not see this before, but your Managers are behind you cheering you on, telling you not to lose steam, offering free Lunches.
You get conflicted. You know its wrong. I worked there 2 days , the third day I came to work clocked in....looked around and just got up and left.
I went through the 6 week training and left after. I caught on pretty quickly that they were the bad guys and I was going to be asked to do some dubious stuff regularly, so I milked the paid training and quit the day I was supposed to finally get on the phones lmao
8.
I worked for a call center for about a month that bugged people to donate to "charities" with very similar names to actual charities, but less than 1% of the pledge would actually go towards a charity.
When i found this out i felt anxious about it and left, basically ghosting on it. No manager or employee of any kind even so much as called once when I missed my next shift. I just stopped showing up and then never heard from anyone again.
A few weeks later I got a call to my land line (that i don't give out), asking if I wanted to come work for... the exact same company. in my head I was like "do you guys even remember that I literally DID work there and then just stopped showing up? oh ok then."
Definitely how a legitimate and not shady corporation would act.....
7.
A long time ago - like in the early 1980's I got a job at a call center - I was about 21 at the time. There were 5 or 6 of us who started the same day. The deal was we were selling discount photocopy paper and toner (back in the day, toner powder was poured into a reservoir by the user). The call center manager gave us several scripts - but encouraged us to ad lib once we got the hang of it. We were to call businesses from a list they had generated. A typical narrative would say that due to some accident (duplicate order, trucking accident, bankruptcy, etc.) we had tonnes of surplus toner or paper. When ever we first mentioned "toner" we were told to say "you know that black messy stuff you put in your copier" as kind of a folksy hook and were to refer to Xerox, HP and Canon as "the big three".
At this point, we were told and believed that the supplier bought bulk supplies from real "accidents", bankruptcies and over stocked items - so basically the scripted narratives were "mostly" true. In truth, we were just an order placer for bulk wholesalers of supplies. There were no accidents, mistakes or bankruptcies involved, but apparently these lies helped people believe they were getting a deal.
The first day - I didn't do any live calls, just training, role playing and practice with a sales trainer and instruction on how to process orders and record calls. Since the pay was 100% commission - this was unpaid work.
The second day only 2 of the new hires showed up. It started with a sales huddle, a rah rah affair where we "celebrated" the previous days numbers and top performers and were given the key messages for the day/week and told who was pushing paper vs toner. I was put on the toner team. I spent the morning shadowing an experienced salesperson who made several sales each hour - but again, unpaid work for me. Then was given a headset, a list and an order book after lunch. I made my first sale on about the 3rd call (huge cheer - I was a star for 30 seconds) - but then nothing the rest of the day. So basically I made about $10.
After work I saw a fellow salesman waiting for a bus, so I offered him a ride to get the scoop on the company because I was having some doubts. He basically said he had just quit and the whole business was a scam. The lists given to the callers were sorted - the top sales people got pre-qualified leads, the rest got basically random businesses. The 1 sale I got that day was a plant - everyone gets 1 plant on their first day. For every 100 or so calls, you get about 20 that actually listen to your narrative and maybe 1 that places a small order - and about 2/3 of the orders are cancelled almost immediately so there is no commission.
For Many of the cancelled orders, their phone number got put on the pre-qualified lists for the top sales men the next month. He also told me the whole over stock, trucking accident, bankruptcy thing was a big lie, we were just placing orders for a bulk supplier. The prices were cheap because the licensed suppliers had much bigger markups, but that message didn't sell as well. We also had a cheaper, inferior product that would often void the warranty of the manufacturers.
Third day I didn't show up.
6.
Worked for an environmental non-profit as a teen doing calls and going door to door. I didn't really understand the legislation we were getting signatures for but hey it's good for the environment. A very very nice hippie lady invited me in and explained that the non-profit I was working for was financed by the oil companies and was trying to backdoor a way to remove any liability for spills in the Gulf. I did some research and, sure enough, that was indeed the case. Told everyone in my office. About half were horrified and the other were like "Eh, it's a livin'" I left and so did many others. It was a trash place to work anyway as you were paid by how much you brought in in donations.
5.
I was 16 and back in the day (circa 2003), Montreal was a huge haven for telemarketing scam operations - particularly those targeting the US.
So being young and naive, I started phoning up places that had 'help wanted' ads in the local newspaper. One called me back and told me to come in for an interview. It was a tiny little operation (for those of you from Montreal - right behind the famous Orange Julep) with maybe about 10 people working there. The interview was quick and I got hired on the spot.
They explained to me that Visa and Mastercard had an "issuing department" that they contracted out to smaller centres and we had to help process approved applications to get people their actual cards.
I believed it.
So I worked there for about two weeks, calling people and telling them that they got approved for a credit card application that they submitted (a while back, it could have been up to six months ago - I still remember the script!) and that we needed to get their information to update their file and re-run the credit check to issue their credit card.
It turns out that they were selling them a 'credit repair kit' (but that would only happen during the "verification" phone call - when the client agreed to everything, the supervisor would come on the line, dial out to a separate number to make a verification recording with the person on the line, and quickly rush through the information and blurb out the credit repair kit portion at the last second) - funny enough the times the client objected or hesitated, they'd just hang up and tell me to go to the next person.
Two weeks passed by and then I was due for my first paycheck - on Monday! So I walk in all happy knowing that I must have made a super duper commission-
Huh- that's weird. The doors are locked.
Eh.... they're not answering the phone either.
WHAT THE... the office is empty and everything is gone.
Then another one of my colleagues showed up and sighed - then he mentioned to me "you didn't think they they were REALLY issuing credit cards, did you?"
...
So I headed back home all sad. I would spend the rest of that summer working at the grocery store.
4.
Got a job at a telemarketing place once.
First day was told "If you are okay scamming people you can make a lot of money."
After the intro class we were split into pairs and were told to listen in to the experienced "workers".
Essentially how it worked was you call into a real company and the scammers would get phone numbers close to the reputable companies, so as you call in and are on hold, you think you are waiting to speak with them.
A message would come on, with some kind of scam deal, a free trip, $1 dollar subscription for 12 months that costs you hundreds later on, things like that.
The very first call this confused senior. Who thought she was waiting to speak with her bank. So she willingly gave out things like her credit card number ect. By the time she clued in and realized it was a scam and asked us not to process the information, the rep hung up on her and was actually laughing...
Needless to say, I hopped on a bus home after that to go back to the want ads.
3.
I worked for one company (which acted as two) called AidNest and thereafter USDR...while pretending to be two companies. Can I do this? Or do I have to edit the names out? The companies don't exist anymore
Anyway, I found out a couple of months into the job that although it wasn't exactly a scam per se, we were selling a service that people didn't need and could do for themselves.
Later though, everything turned into a scam when the following happened: The owner's old business partner sued his balls off, and managed to get all of his accounts frozen, including of course the ones where all of the clients' money went, and where all of our salaries came from.
A couple of weeks later, we weren't even allowed into the building anymore, almost 200 call center agents left on the street jobless. Oh and during those couple of weeks we didn't get paid but were all forced to come in and try to make new sales to effectively pay our own salaries while things "picked back up".They never did. They still owe me about 2.5k USD, we went to the ministry of labor, we made quite a fuss and it even made the news (without identifying the company itself). The legal representatives fled the country, and well, I guess we'll all just have to be pissed forever.
It broke my heart every time I continued to receive email notifications WHICH I CAN'T TURN OFF from clients who are still looking for responses and for help with their debt, and I can't even log into the system (which was paid for by the company) because it's not being funded but somehow still receives incoming messages, don't know how that works.
So I guess, what I mean is, if you worked with AidNest and haven't been getting answers...that's why. So not only the clients got scammed, but the employees did too.
I'm spending way too much time on this comment that probably only a couple of people will read but I think it's my one chance to help at least one or two people realize that although they didn't start out being scammed, they definitely were eventually because of the piece of garbage owner(s).
2.
After I started at one "selling" credit cards to old people on Social Security/Disability, I realized what I was being told to do and I walked out. That place was absolutely awful, and I legitimately felt bad for anyone I successfully duped into signing up with their "ONE-TIME LIFE-TIME MEMBER CARD ACTIVATION FEE OF ONE NINETY-NINE NINETY-NINE."
1.
GiphyWhen I was about 19 I worked for a call center for 3 days. They were scamming everyone including the employees.
First, shifts were only 3 hours long and you would be scheduled for 2 of those back to back (I.e. 9-12 & 12:30-3:30). This is because if you are scheduled for longer than that you are 1. Legally entitled to break time 2. If you are scheduled for longer than 3 hours and get cut you have to be paid a minimum of 3 hours. The company would regularly cut you if you weren't bringing in enough money, you were then expected to return for your next shift.
I'm sure they screwed people's pay checks somehow but I walked out in day 3 and abandoned my paycheck.
I walked out because that was the day I learned where the money went. See, we weren't selling anything, we were raising money for breast cancer research. The key piece that led me to quit was when I learned that 0.1% of all donations went towards the actual research. The remaining 99.9%? Well, it was lining pockets and funding other centers to scam people.
I now only donate directly to a source and even then only after vetting them.
