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911 Calls During Which Dispatchers Could Barely Stop Themselves From Laughing (22 Moments)
Usually, a call to an emergency number such as 911 or 112 is a serious thing. Yet, sometimes, the situations people call for can sound quite funny when said out loud. Or be funny themselves. After all, people are interesting beings who tend to get into some odd and funny situations. This list contains various stories of fun-sounding emergency calls shared by dispatchers in a viral Reddit thread.
More info: Reddit
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#2
When I was a 911 calltaker I got a call from a gentleman reporting an issue with his toilet. For whatever reason it was a bit hard for me to understand exactly what the problem was, except that it definitely involved his toilet. After a little while, I determined to the best of my ability that the toilet was overflowing and he didn't know what to do. Although plumbing issues are absolutely not an appropriate reason for calling 911, it wasn't unheard of. To a certain extent I can understand the thought process and people have certainly called 911 for less.
After a bit more talking, however, I realized that he had not called about a plumbing issue. You see, it wasn't water that was coming out of his toilet, but demons. The demons were spilling out of his toilet and he needed help. I put in a complaint for the police (I know, cops for a mental health issue is not idea, but it's the only thing we had) and kept him on the phone as he was fairly distressed. Unfortunately, it was a busy evening and the cops wouldn't be able to get to him for a few minutes. As such, I asked if he could close the toilet lid. He said he could and he did. Did this stop the demons from coming out of his toilet? It did! This made him much more calm and I was able to release the call. Can't remember what ended up happening with him. I'd guess he was taken to the local ER that had a psychiatric crisis center voluntarily. But it stands out as the time I solved a caller's toilet demon problem with a very straight-forward solution.
#3
Not 911 but worked for animal control dispatch in a tourist town during my senior year in HS. Got a call from a lady that had called 911 previously and was told to call our number. Picked up the phone to what sounded like a whole car of very panicked people all yelling at once. After asking what was wrong several times I finally heard someone yell "a deer! There's a deer in somebody's yard, yall gotta come pick it up!" Thinking it was a dead deer/road kill I said an animal control officer would come pick up the body soon. And a kid in the background starts bawling saying the officer was gonna kill it! So I paused for a second and asked is the deer alive? What is it doing? Someone far away from the phone yelled "its just sitting there in the yard! So I said "Yeah this is Texas. He lives there. Just don't touch him or get too close and y'all will be ok." Literally not even 5 minutes later we got a call from another tourist about a deer chasing a family after they tried to take a selfie with it.... To this say I'm still not sure if it was the same family, but wow. I hope it was.
#4
My mom was a 911 operator in the SF Bay area in the 80s and 90s. I asked her to tell me a story to pass along, so here it is:
I got a 911 call and I couldn't understand the caller. He was slurring his words. I knew he was calling from a bar so I asked if he'd been drinking and after asking many times of asking, I was able to determine that he wanted the police, not an ambulance. He wanted to file assault charges because a woman pulled his tongue. I asked, "how was she able to pull your tongue?" and he said, "because I stuck it out at her." I had to keep muting the call because I was laughing so hard.
Apparently my supervisor went on to play this call in seminars for years and always got a ton of laughter.
#5
My kid worked for animal control, we are eating dinner and 911 dispatch calls him. Some panicked lady had called 911 about an owl in a tree that couldn’t fly. It had been sitting in the tree for a half hour not moving. Of course it was just before dusk and the owl was just waiting for dark so it could go hunt for dinner. Then there was the call about the one legged duck at the park...
Edit to add: he actually went to the park to make sure the duck wasn’t injured but realized after 15 minutes how silly he looked chasing after this one legged duck that was outrunning him.
#6
A young kid called and asked to talk to the fire trucks. It was pretty late at night so I told him the firetrucks were already sleeping and asked him to put a parent on the phone.
Another time, the caller said "is this the krust krab?". Reflex kicked in, and I replied "no, this is Patrick" before I even realized what had happened.
#7
Ok ex-911 dispatcher/EMT-I here, so while on light duty due to injury working rescue calls I was trained to do 911 call intakes in Florida and worked midnight shifts (always the craziest type of calls) I receive a call from a hysterical teenage boy. After getting him to calm down he tells me that his friend has been swallowed up by a tube monster. (??) So I asked him where this tube monster is at? Are you there with the tube monster right now? He says yes he can hear his friend, but he is trapped. After finally being able to get the location of the caller (this is in the '90s) Units are called to the scene - police, fire, and ambulance. Now I have been on the phone for over 20 mins with this young man and had him stay on the phone until help arrived. Then he says, "Man my dad's gonna [end] me". I asked him why? He says 'cause I promised him I wouldn't drop acid anymore, and we've been trippin' all night. So I had to get on the radio and advise crews coming in of the current mental status of both caller and victim. When crews arrived they found the teen at the bottom of a hill stuck inside of an actual plastic tube they had been climbing inside of and rolling each other down said hill while tripping. The teen had to be extricated. The other teen was found by the payphone awaiting dad's wrath.
#8
(Pre-911, before addresses were automatically shown) A couple [making love] knocked the phone off the night stand and they had the police on speed dial. I thought she was being choked out so I had the phone company track the address and sent the cavalry. When they pounded on the front door I heard the woman say “Oh my God there are five cop cars outside!” The guy went downstairs and she picked up the phone and said “hello?” I said hello, ma’am, this is the police. Are you ok?” She said, “I’m fine. We were uh... busy.” I said I had been listening for the last few minutes and she said “Oh... we must have knocked the phone on the floor.”
The patrol guys told the guy they had to see her in person at the same time I was talking to her. She came downstairs so they could verify she was ok. They said she was pretty embarrassed.
#9
My late aunt once called 911 because my uncle wouldn't change the fan that was blowing on her. Because it was a small community in NE Michigan, the police laughed and came out and changed the fan.
#10
When I was still in training, my supervisor would play back training 911 calls for me to listen to and dispatch. In one call, the caller says that their friend is dying and that they’re in their car and they’ve pulled over on an access road near a busy restaurant. As the dispatcher asks more questions, we discover that the caller is holding their friend’s internal organs in her hands. Dispatch asks all the questions and eventually the caller says that their friend was hit by a car crossing the busy street in front of the restaurant. Dispatch keeps talking to her until a unit arrived on scene. They disconnect the call and the next thing you hear is the unit keying up and trying to hold back the laughter as he reported that the victim had died of their injuries prior to his arrival. And that the victim was a squirrel.
#11
112 Operator here.I had a woman who wanted to report herself dead. Like not in she wanted to commit [self-harm] (DO NOT DO THAT! There is help and if you have these thoughts please talk to people or a doc about this!) but she was sure that she died. A somewhat normal middle aged woman and she called 112 (medics and fire, 110 is for cops) so we would get her a morgue. It was my strangest call ever to tell a person, who was very much alive talking to me, that in fact she was not dead. We sent an ambualnce (for free, long live the eu-healthcaresystem).In the end it turned out to be a shroom induced psychosis EDIT: Yeah weird, but also funny afterwards.
#12
Colleague, let's call her Sharon, answered this one. Sharon was from West Africa, and spoke excellent English with an accent that was mix of a British and her native language. I was her supervisor and listened in on this call.
Male caller: My wife is trying to [end] me.
Sharon: What did she do?
Male caller: She put a mothball in my crack pipe.
Sharon: A what? Male caller: A mothball! Sharon: A mothball?
Male callet: A mothball.
Sharon: (as an aside to me, What is a mothball?)
The What? A mothball! exchange was repeated a few times. Though Sharon's English was excellent "mothball" was one word she was unfamiliar with. And something about her accent as she kept repeating this just got to me.
Listening in I had a hard time stifling a laugh and couldn't compose myself enough to explain and get the dispatch out for a few moments. I explained mothbslls to Sharon after the call ended.
Ambulance sent due to possible lung damage from inhaling fumes from a burning mothball. Police sent for the crack pipe.
#13
At a long term care facility I worked at One of our residents called 911 with the phone in her room because she didnt get ketchup with her lunch. Not kidding. The sherrifs office called back to let the nurses know what she'd done while I was standing right there. I've never laughed so hard at work.
#14
I had to discard the 'funny to us but too hard to explain why because of our dark and wildly inappropriate sense of humor' stories to find an appropriate one but here it is.
A man called and said he dislocated his shoulder. He sounded sort of funny and like he was caught in something so I asked him if he had fallen or something. "No... I was putting on a thermal shirt and my shoulder popped out and now I'm stuck. I was going to drive myself to the hospital but I'd have to drive with my arm out of the window". Ambulance was dispatched for a shirt extrication and transport.
#15
Not an operator. But I had a friend in high school who got addicted to [illegal substances]. Years after she got out of rehab she told me the story about how she ended up in rehab.
She had called the police on herself because, “there are demons living in my walls and I’d like the police to come remove them.”
When she sobered up, she also realized she didn’t live next to a pool. That’s important because while she was high she would sit outside and watch people swim. She did that for two years. Even though there was no pool.
#16
We occasionally have people call in, concerned that their local convenience store is locked and they can get in (“well ma’am that just means the clerk is using the restroom.” “They’ve been gone over five minutes!” “Some things take longer than others.”)
We’ve had people wanting police because those a-hole McDonald’s employees refused to sell them a whopper.
My favorite though was the woman who was spelling out a name for us, using her own special brand of phonetics...
D like Dinosaur
O like Oh my god!
N like Nuh Unh.
#17
I had one, not too many months ago, from a Spanish speaking man. I answered, he immediately began speaking in Spanish. No big deal, I say "No habla, uno momento por favor, translator line." and get the language line on the phone and ask questions that they translate and give me his responses for. Nothing big, he just heard some shouting and odd noises.
Suddenly the language line drops, and I'm still on the phone with the guy. In broken high school Spanish, I tell him "One minute, I'm sorry!" as I try to fumble my keypad to redial language line. He just responds, in perfect, nearly accentless English, "So... Are the cops coming?"
My brain freezes and I just manage to say, "Yes sir, they've been dispatched. Call us back if anything changes." "Okay, thanks." *Click*.
I stared at my screens for a hot minute before breaking into distressed laughter.
#18
In addition to 911, my agency also answers non-emergency calls. We mostly have women on my shift and we had one guy keep calling until he finally got the lone male operator for that morning so he can air his complaint to “someone who would understand”. He used a toilet in one of the buildings we dispatch maintenance for and his complaint was that the water level was too high... and he knows this because his balls touched the water when he sat down.
#19
My department dispatches our area's animal control after hours. Once received a call from a guy freaking out because he caught a possum in his house. I asked him which room he was able to confine the animal and he didn't tell me which room, but said he trapped it in a microwave. I had many questions.
#20
I'm not an operator, this is just a story from my dad.
He was pressing random buttons in his car a few months ago, trying to figure out some stuff. He ended up pressing a 911 button, and when they answered my dad was insanely confused. Once they had a few laughs, the operator told him to hang up. Thing is though, he doesn't know how to.
It was pretty funny.
#21
I was a relay operator for the deaf, hard of hearing, and speech disabled. Was instructed to call 9-1-1 because a guy left his cardigan at the doctor's office. (Fair play to him; the doctor's answering machine outgoing message, which I faithfully relayed to him, did indeed say "if this is an emegency, dial 9-1-1.).
#22
My SO is an EMT and has many hilarious stories. The one she loves to share is: she was responding to a frequent flier (they call a lot!) who was basically given the choice to ride with them to the hospital or go to jail for the abuse of calling 911 again.... This patient was wearing a robe. They brought him to the hospital and he's drunk as always. When she does the call in for the hospital the hospital asks if the guy is wearing a blue robe. She says he is. You've never heard such displeasure in a persons voice when the hospital replied "We will be happy to see YOU when you get here". So they get to the hospital and put the guy in a room. My SO goes to check the guy in while her partner stays in the room with the guy. The nurse was upset and said "Oh no, I've heard about this guy. I've worked here so long and never seen him". My SO goes back into the room and the guy is walking out of the bathroom and his robe is wide open. She then learned he was not wearing any underwear. The nurse came in, saw the guy, threw her hands up in the air and walked out without saying anything.
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