I work for the fire department, and I answer the phone.

Me: “Fire department, how can I help you?”

There are lots of static and screaming kids in the background.

Me: “Hello, is this an emergency?”

There is still no answer, just the screaming kids.

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: “F****** d*** it! My d*** phone called the wrong number. I am trying to reach the f****** water department!”

Me: “I can transfer you if you would like.”

Caller: “No, you can fix my phone so it does what I want.” *Click*

Me: “If I could do that, I’d be rich.”

I work for the fire department. I get this call from the public.

Caller: “Can you come and cut down the branches from a tree in my yard?”

Me: “No, sir, we do not do branch—”

Caller: “But my kids could die! You’re supposed to save lives, not kill people.”

Me: “Our staff is not trained in the proper way to remove branches. We suggest you call an arborist since they have the proper training and equipment.”

Caller: “But I pay your salary, not theirs. You are required to help me!”

Sometimes, when we go to patient’s homes to get them to the hospital, we can’t bring them to the closest one because it’s full. This patient was set to go to the closest, but it was not possible.

Patient’s Wife: “So, you’ll bring him to [Hospital], right?”

Colleague: “Ma’am, [Hospital] is currently full.”

He opens the website that shows the availability of hospitals in the area.

Colleague: “See? It’s red. We could bring your husband to [List Of Different Hospitals in the area].”

Patient’s Wife: “But he has always been treated at [Hospital]! They know him there!”

Colleague: “They might know him, but that doesn’t mean they can magically fit him in the already full hospital.”

Patient’s Wife: “This is outrageous! My husband’s sick and you refuse to get him to the hospital!”

Me: “No, ma’am. We simply can’t get him to [Hospital]. But we’re offering you hospitals in the area that’ll surely treat him just as well. Just give us the physician letters from the hospital and the other hospital will surely know how to proceed and properly treat him.”

Patient’s Wife: “I demand you call the hospital and ask if you can bring him!”

My colleague and I look at each other and sigh. He starts calling the hospital. He explains the situation to the woman sitting at the ER desk. He then puts her on speaker.

Woman At The ER Desk: “Ma’am, we are pretty busy here. The paramedics could bring him here, but he would have to wait a very long time until he’s being treated.”

Patient’s Wife: “I don’t care! He has to be at [Hospital]!”

My colleague and I shrugged and decided to just drive the patient to the hospital. We dropped him off, apologizing quietly to the ER staff for giving them more work. A few hours later, as we passed by the ER to pick a patient up to drive them home again, we saw the woman loudly complaining to the ER desk and asking why it was taking so long for her husband to be treated. My colleague and I just looked at each other, shook our heads, and moved on with our days.

This story takes place back in ye olden days of dial-up Internet.  

The place where I worked at the time had two phone systems so you had to dial a prefix to select the line. Unlike most places where it was a single digit, they decided to get more convoluted and used three-digit prefixes — 922 for an internal line and 991 for an external line. Why they picked those number combinations, I have no idea.

One day, a non-technically-inclined coworker needed to take a laptop on a trip and he needed the IT folks to set up the dialing program for him so that he could get his email. In order to test that it was working, they set the number to 991 1-800-[number]. Then, they made the mistake of not wiping the prefix before handing it to the employee.

This employee didn’t know that he would need to look up what he needed to dial to get an outside line from his hotel and change it on his laptop. He just plugged in his laptop and tried to connect. It just so happened that his hotel used nine to get an outside line, so his machine was dialing 9-911 over and over and over again trying to connect. He had no idea why it wasn’t connecting, so he was blissfully unaware of just who he was calling until hotel security showed up at his door.

Fortunately, the authorities understood that he had not done it intentionally, so there were no serious consequences for him, but the poor guy was too afraid to try to connect his laptop for the rest of the trip.

I work as a dishwasher at a restaurant in town. Toward the end of the night, one of my coworkers was cleaning the stoves. The stoves were still hot and the second he poured water on them, the amount of steam that came off of them was enough to set off the sprinklers above them as well as the fire alarm.

A few minutes later, the fire department showed up — two firemen in all their gear, and one in a regular uniform.

During this whole situation, there was a group celebrating a woman’s birthday party. Everyone in the group was severely drunk; that being said, when the firemen were trying to come into the restaurant, somebody in the group thought the firemen were male strippers. The group became loud and excited, chanting, “Strippers! Strippers! Strippers!”

One of the women in the group forced herself onto one of the firemen and a police officer on scene had to break it up.

Fortunately for the group, nobody was arrested.