10 Dumb Reasons to Call 911

911 exists for genuine emergencies — life-threatening situations, active crimes, and medical crises where seconds matter. Dispatchers who receive non-emergency calls are diverted from responding to calls where people’s lives may depend on immediate response. And yet, year after year, dispatchers take calls that have become legendary for their spectacular failure to represent an emergency by any definition. These ten categories represent the genuinely bizarre, the genuinely entitled, and the genuinely confused — all drawn from documented real-world calls.

1. My Fast Food Order Was Wrong

This is far more common than it should be. Several high-profile 911 calls have been placed by customers at fast food establishments reporting that their burger was prepared incorrectly, their chicken nuggets were cold, or the restaurant had run out of an item they wanted. In one documented Florida case, a woman called 911 three times because McDonald’s had run out of Chicken McNuggets and refused to give her a refund. Dispatchers’ patience in these situations is genuinely heroic.

2. My Neighbor’s Music Is Mildly Annoying

Most cities have a non-emergency police line specifically for noise complaints. Many people call 911 instead, for music that is, by any objective measure, not a crisis. “I can hear it through my wall” does not constitute an emergency. “I can kind of make out the bass line” is decidedly not a 911 situation. The non-emergency line exists. It has been widely advertised. It remains underused.

3. There Is a Spider in My House

Yes. Arachnophobia is real, documented, and genuinely distressing. It is also not an emergency service category. Dispatchers across the country have fielded calls from people who have encountered spiders in their bathrooms, on their ceilings, in their cars, and on one occasion in a woman’s hair, and have decided that what the situation required was emergency police response rather than, for instance, a shoe.

4. My Child Won’t Go to Bed

Parents of toddlers will understand the emotional state that produces this call. They will not be surprised to learn that dispatchers have received calls from parents who were at their absolute limit with a child who refused to sleep and decided that what the situation needed was a badge and a uniform. In at least several documented cases, officers were actually dispatched, spoke with the child firmly about bedtime, and it apparently worked. This does not make it a good use of emergency services.

5. I Am Intoxicated and Need a Ride Home

The logic here has a certain internal coherence: calling 911 while intoxicated to request safe transport home is, in at least some sense, responsible behavior relative to driving. It is also not what 911 is for, and in many jurisdictions the safe transport of intoxicated individuals who are not in danger is explicitly not within emergency services’ scope. Rideshare apps exist. So do friends. So do taxis.

6. I Am Stuck in a Drive-Through and Cannot Exit

Traffic situations that are inconvenient but not dangerous have generated a surprising number of 911 calls. Being in a drive-through that is moving slowly, being stuck behind a car that has stalled briefly, or being in a parking lot situation that is irritating — these are not emergencies. Several dispatchers have reported calls from individuals in drive-throughs who felt they had been waiting an unreasonable amount of time and wanted law enforcement to intervene on their behalf.

7. Someone Cut in Line

Queue integrity, while genuinely important to the functioning of civil society, is not enforced by emergency services. In documented cases, people have called 911 because someone skipped the line at a grocery store, a theme park, a government office, and a coffee shop. The righteous indignation is understandable. The recourse selected was not.

8. My Internet Is Down

This one appears in dispatchers’ lists of notable calls with a frequency that suggests it is not an isolated incident. Internet service disruption, while subjectively catastrophic in the twenty-first century, is a matter for one’s internet service provider, whose hold music is at least appropriate preparation for a long wait. Dispatchers have reported calls from individuals who wanted police sent to their ISP to compel restoration of service.

9. I Am Out of Toilet Paper

At least two documented calls have been placed to 911 by individuals who found themselves in a restroom without toilet paper and concluded that this constituted an emergency requiring response. Whether the callers were at home or in a public facility makes no meaningful difference to the classification of the emergency. In both documented cases, the dispatchers — showing remarkable composure — suggested alternative solutions.

10. To Find Out What Is on Television Tonight

This one stands alone in the taxonomy of 911 misuse because it requires the largest number of unexplained mental steps to arrive at. Multiple dispatchers have documented calls from individuals who dialed 911 — the emergency services number — to ask what was on TV or to get television program listings. The calls were made on the theory that 911 dispatchers are a general-purpose information service. They are not. But the calls were made. And the dispatchers, because they are professionals, responded.

Please note: misuse of 911 is a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions, punishable by fines and in some cases imprisonment. More importantly, it diverts resources from actual emergencies where actual lives are at stake.