I'm a 9-1-1 operator, not your neighborhood exterminator.

“Sir/Ma’am, are you experiencing an emergency?”

I don’t know how many times I’ve asked that question. Frankly, it doesn’t matter—despite the fact that the 9-1-1 line has ALWAYS been reserved solely for emergency situations, people WILL continue to call with untimely complaints. Many complaints are also ones that the police have nothing to do with.

Case in point: Those who call 9-1-1 and ask the operator (a.k.a. me) or a police officer to come on over and squish a bug for them. As terrified as I am of spiders, I don’t think I know a single person who would realistically do this—but it’s a common occurrence.

One woman called me crying, saying there’d been a scorpion in her laundry room. She’d flipped a saucepan over it to contain it, but she was sobbing and begging for an officer’s assistance. I had to remind her that, as scared as I would be, too, I could not send out an officer to squish or shoot the scorpion for her. “You’re welcome to call an exterminator, though.”

I was once on the line with a man who had panic in his voice as he told me about the fleas on his dog. “They’re on the couch, too,” he told me. “What do I do?” I don’t know, man, call a groomer. Do you realize dying people need this line?

Finally, my favorite: a man who called, screaming and in hysterics, about a beehive that had formed on the tree in front of his house. The bees were EVERYWHERE, according to this man, and an officer needed to be sent out immediately. How was he going to leave his house? Exasperated after several attempts at convincing him to contact a beekeeper, I told him:

“Sir, we can’t arrest the bees.”