Written by: Tom Sawyer

A woman called 911 to report she didn’t get as much shrimp as she wanted in her fried rice at a Texas restaurant.

Haltom City police on Tuesday released the taped emergency call, in which the customer is heard telling the dispatcher, “to get a police officer up here, what has to happen?”

The customer also says: “He didn’t even put extra shrimp in there.”

The upset customer had left the Fort Worth-area restaurant when an officer arrived Monday afternoon.

Restaurant workers say the woman had been denied a refund after leaving with her order, then returning to complain.

Cook June Lee says nothing was wrong with the meal, and that “some customers are happy. Some are not.”

What is really going on with people calling the police for bad service at restaurants?  I’ve had bad service, you’ve had bad service, we have all had bad service, but this thing about calling the cops is new.  If you remember, a lady recently called 911 about her McNuggets or something and now this.    Yes, it is funny, but it is only funny because it is so utterly ridiculous.

Do people realize that there are serious situations that the police must attend to?  I don’t think a few shrimp here or there trumps a domestic violence call, a traffic accident or a bank robbery.  If I’m wrong and the police have no problem with these kinds of calls I would like to know it so I have an option the next time Wendy’s messes up my order – in my experience Wendy’s is the absolute worse at getting your order right.

I would like to know what others would consider situations where the police could become involved if we are really going to start calling them when things don’t go the way we think they should at a restaurant and/or business.  You know I have some situations:

• I had a situation with Best Buy where I was told another store had the product I wanted.  I jumped in the car, went to the other store in rush hour and…they didn’t have it.  I would have punched in 911 quick.  I actually returned something from the first store that was in my car and am currently boycotting Best Buy.  Surprisingly (not really) other stores have everything they have for less money.
• A mechanic charged me a lot of money to fix my AC only to tell me I needed further repairs that would cost more than $700.  I took my car to another mechanic and around $260 later everything is cool.  Get it, everything is cool…the AC.  Anyhow…
• A new Applebee’s was built right around the corner from where we used to live and I (used to) love Applebee’s.  So this nice new restaurant opened for business and was horrible.  Additionally, they had some un-wanted customers in the form of rats/mice, bugs, etc.  Now that should be criminal!

I think this is a trend that needs to stop immediately before someone – like me – calls the cops the next time I get a call at 11pm from someone trying to sell me something.

Tags: 911 calls for food are becoming common, customer calls cops over lack of shrimp, needless 911 calls

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Random Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.