I work in the ER so I’m on the receiving end of some dumb 911 calls. Most recent was a guy who shows up via ambulance at 1am because he twisted his ankle 3 days ago and it still hurts.
The medic who brought him in was not amused.
Paramedic here:
Back pain from having back surgery that day (or the previous one). That patient called us once during the day and also at 3am the same shift.
Dry fried chicken is a real emergency, especially here in the south.
It was in the news a few years ago that smaller county’s had their lines clogged with calls of FaceBook being down.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/08/02/people-called-911-when-facebook-crashed
Honestly, it’s hard to pick. We get silly calls every day that tie up our lines because people think a personal emergency or inconvenience is a life/death emergency. Here are a few recent ones:
- mom turned off the internet because he was failing math class. Wanted us to force mom to turn in the internet.
- neighbors porch light was green and it was not a holiday and they thought this should be illegal.
- the hooker he didn’t pay stole his crack as payment and he wanted to report the theft
- there was a burro (wild donkey) in their campsite in the desert and wanted someone to remove it.
- they ran out of gas on the highway and didn’t want to pay the fee to their insurance/tow truck. Wanted us to tell the tow truck to gas them up for free.
- neighbor was parked crooked in their own driveway and caller wanted them ticketed for “unsightly parking.”
- of course the classic “McDonald’s is out of chicken nuggets” type calls.