Young Gamer Called 911 About PSN/Xbox Live Hacker Outage

[Clive Howlitzer]

As a 911 dispatcher, I can say that we get calls about worse and more asinine things. However, while it is easy to crap on them for wasting time, I don't think that is always the way to go. I mean, a lot of people who call 911 for stupid reasons(not all, mind you) are looking for information or need help with something and they just don't know who else to call. 911 is blasted into their brains as the number to call(We used to advertise a similar shorthand for our business line but not anymore) so they call it and hope to find help.

It is far better to assist them, remind them that 911 is for emergencies and then get them on their way. Being a smug asshole to them on the phone is not the way to do it. It doesn't matter how much of a 'waste of time' it is. Part of your job as a 911 dispatcher is dealing with people, you are a service job, nothing is too much of a 'waste of time' for you to ignore it.

That is just my take on it though from working in the same line of work.

 

[Scars Unseen]

"911, what's your emergency?"

"I just found out that I'm going to die."

"Okay, please stay calm, and give me as much detail as you can."

"Well my grandma just went away, and my sister told me that she was gone forever. She said that grandma is dead, and that everyone dies eventually. I don't want to die!"

"...umm are your parents there?"

"Oh god, I hope so! I don't want them to go like grandma did!"

 

[Strazdas]

And people who thought the operator was "a dick";
Are you crazy? Tying up the line like that (which happens WAY too often) with something that is not an emergency can block a call from someone bleeding out trying to get an ambulance! In an *emergency* sometimes you can only dial once, and if they are unable to pick up at once, someone can and DOES die.

Look up the statistics on those deaths.
Read that one Cracked.com article with tales from real 911 operators...

The operator was a dick. he should have told the kid this wasnt an emergency and he should call only for emergencies, not act like some moral crusader telling the kid what he should do.

and if your emergency service is so bad you cannot take one extra call without blocking calls them the fault is that of emergency service being shit service.

And yeah, plenty of emergency service operators are shit at thier job. a recent story here was where the operator decided a girl calling about assault was pranking because she could not tell them where she is. turns out they found her dead in the morning. The emergency operators already knew where she was though, due to automatic cell triangulation in those services.

The person that thought it was a prank? still working there.

They were probably busy enjoying singleplayer while they waited for the network to come back online like normal people.

In the days of Online DRM this is soon something people wont be able to do.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

To be fair, that's no worse than some of the shit people dial 999 for in this country.

Mind you, I too was horribly affected by the XBL outage over Christmas. It was awful, I had to get up and switch GTA:O for New Vegas and everything.

(And before anyone goes on about 'not understanding what young kids can go through' please let me state that my three nephews couldn't use their brand new fresh-off-Santa's-sleigh Xbox One on Christmas. You know what they did? Played with their other toys.)

 

[Stg]

People going off on the operator need to realize when someone dials 911, it ties up the line and if there actually is a life-threatening emergency, that kid asking about the PSN/Live status is preventing someone from getting the help they needed. It's understandable the operators get frustrated with these types of calls as they do happen - most of which aren't all that rare even in the small town I live in. My buddy used to be one of those operators the the stories she would tell us about the "emergencies" people would call about are outrageous.

Yes the kid was being stupid and I'm sure all of us did stupid shit at his age (I'm guessing around 11), but even I knew at that age and younger that 911 was only for life threatening emergencies only. If my parents had found out I dialed 911 to ask about my online gaming service being down, there would have been serious repercussions.

 

[Grabehn]

The one question I have is: Who takes care of the kid? Because while the answer could've been "we don't know, this isn't an emergency" instead of being a dick, letting the kid call 911 for that just seems extremely dumb.

Then again, there's still dumb-asses legally considered "adults" that would call 911 over far stupider reasons than this one.

 

[renegade7]

How young? 16 or 17 young, because in that case that would be a problem. But if we're talking about someone who's maybe 10 or 11 who might, for instance, not know 911 isn't the same thing as the police or thinks that he's been hacked personally (and would as such want to call the police, and called 911 due to not knowing the difference), then it's just a simple lack of maturity.

 

[punipunipyo]

"... try going outside, or read a book...." is not an proper reply, this sounds like a discriminating comment against gamer!!! personally, I think either this kid didn't know that it'll cost his/her parent around $500 for non-emergency random all to police, or this is some low grade prank just to get some "lol"s out of it...