I have a friend who is a 911 dispatcher in Kansas City, Missouri, and he occasionally likes to text me some of the more outrageous calls that he receives at work.
I think the funny, ridiculous calls help offset the terrible and depressing things they have to deal with, because you know they get plenty of those every day.
For example, he told me a guy called and hysterically told him that Tom Hanks was driving a pickup truck down 75th Street! Tom Hanks! In Kansas City!
What a job that must be…
911 operators talked about the funniest calls they’ve ever received on AskReddit.
1. This is amazing.
“A guy calls from a payphone to complain that he has a pipe wrench stuck up his butt and he needed an ambulance.
He gave his location as the corner where the payphone was located. I asked him if he could tell me his appearance so I could be sure the medics could find him.
His response, “look dude, I’ll be the only guy on the corner with a pipe wrench in his butt.”
I couldn’t argue with that…”
2. I hope he let him out.
“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.”
3. Aliens!
“While working for the Airport PD we would commonly get a call from a lady that lived nearby and thought aliens were scanning her brain.
To solve this we would have to “launch the alert fighters” (which we didn’t have). She lived close enough that we could just wait till a plane took off and tell her that sound was the alert fighters.
She would be fine then for a couple more months.”
4. Wow.
“Woman calls up to allege that her car has been s*xually soiled by a car washer.
She had left her car with a valet service while she was shopping, picked it up and drove it home before she noticed a white mark on her passenger seat. She’s convinced it was spunk, so she calls the police to report it. Operator asked if she had complained to the company, which she had.
They had advised her that the soap they use for fabrics sometimes leaves a mark when it dries and if she just gives it a quick rub, it will go. She then tells the operator that she knows the company is lying because she put her finger on it and then tasted it, and it was definitely spunk and she “knows very well what spunk tastes like.”
Somehow the operator convinced her to complain further to the valeting company and ended the call before falling off his chair laughing.”
5. Haha!
“A man called to say he’s wrestling with deadly 10m (32-33 ft) snake in his backyard.
He was very scared and although I wasn’t sure how did a 10m snake appeared in his backyard I send the emergency to the police. They even called him back, but his father answered. The conversation was quite funny:
Hello, sir. Police here. Is this Mr. Y?
His father.
Do you know where your son is?
I don’t know. Went to the backyard I guess.
Maybe you should check on him. He might be fighting for his life against a deadly snake.
Turned out the guy was a little high and was wrestling with a bush.”
6. We need to figure this out!
“Dude wanted an ambulance because he needed to check if his girlfriend was pregnant or not.
I heard her in the back saying “But my period is over 2 months late!” and he was like “no, no, no. A doctor needs to see it first”.
He didn’t want to accept that it was not an emergency, and couldn’t understand how gynecologists usualy aren’t in an ambulance.”
7. Oh, boy…
“Some guy called about 2 am flipping out becuse his meth batch smelled funny, and he wanted the fire department, but no cops! I got an address out of him after a ridiculous run around, and sent it over to the dispatch people across town.
They didn’t send cops. He was in the county, they sent deputies, and the fire department, and the DEA, and the hazmat team, and he got to come visit and then go spend an ungodly amount of time with the state DOC.
I think he got 50+years. the house/ property he was renting was demolished and is a hazardous area now because he was making so much meth, and I think explosives.”
8. Ouch.
“I used to be a 911 operator from 2014-2018. I was also responsible for training new hires on answering phones.
One day, I get a medic call for a guy wanting an ambulance because he has hemorrhoids. I try to get more information from him like his name, phone number, and where he’s located. I get all of that he starts screaming “MY *SSHOLE, MY *SSHOLE”. During his screams about his *sshole, I turn to my trainee and blankly stare at her.
That was about 6 years ago. We still joke about it to this day.”
9. Are your parents home?
“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.”
10. Wrong place.
“We’ve had people wanting the police because those a-hole McDonald’s employees refused to sell them a whopper.”
11. Two stories.
“I had a guy call in to try and rat out a Chinese massage parlor for giving out “happy endings.”
It was clear that he had some kind of religious guilt about it or something with a deal gone wrong (clearly not a case of molestation, so this is okay to laugh at)… and was trying to make amends. While the premise alone is funny, he REFUSED to say “hand**b”, jacked off, etc. He kept beating around the bush about it and wouldn’t give details, just heavy implications
. Over the course of this five minute call, every other dispatcher picked up on the line and muted their mics, but the room was howling with laughter as this dude danced around getting a tuggy. Eventually, I passed it off his call to the detective/vice division, but that was a very funny five minutes of worksafe masturbation humor
I had another call from a neighboring town that called us because the local department wouldn’t take him seriously. His issue was that a co-worker threatened to, and I quote, “punch his dick off.”
The second he said it, I started laughing because I wasn’t expecting it. He said it with what felt like a comical tone to it as well. I recovered well enough and eventually told him there wasn’t exactly a lot we could do, as it was out of our jurisdiction, but he kept repeating that he was going to have his dick punched off and… I dunno, something about that still makes me laugh to this day.
Almost cartoonish levels of violence enters my head where a weiner just gets Falcon Punched clean off and it makes me giggle.”
12. Locked in.
“I had a man call because he was locked in an Exxon station.
Just trying to take care of business and the workers shut down, turned on the alarm (which he immediately set off when he opened the bathroom door) and left. I stayed on the phone with him until the state police got there.
He was like… My car is still at the pump! This alarm is so loud….”
13. A story from Mom.
“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 I 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.”
Have you ever had to call 911 before?
Or maybe you worked as a 911 operator?
If so, please share your stories with us in the comments.
Thanks in advance!