Nee Naw

Last weekend, at about 4am, I took a call from a middle aged man. He’d apparently been cooking his dinner and spilled some oil on the floor, slipped in it and banged his head, knocking himself out. When he’d come round, he’d called 999. There was nothing really unusual about the call, except the fact that the man had been cooking at 4am in the first place, so I didn’t really give it a second thought, until half an hour later another call came in from the same place. The same man was ranting and raving and calling the poor ambulance crew that had attended him all sorts of unpleasant words. I now realised that his slightly slurred speech that I had previously attributed to his knock on the head was actually due to drunkenness. Looking back, drunkenness was probably the reason that he had been cooking at 4am, and the reason he had spilled the oil and subsequently fallen in it. I checked the log and found the ambulance crew had left the scene because the patient had been “extremely abusive and threatening towards them”.

Trying to maintain a neutral approach (despite the fact that anyone who is inconsiderate enough to call 999 to make a complaint, potentially blocking an emergency call from getting through, is almost always in the wrong), I asked what had happened (I got no coherent answer), and explained that if he wanted another crew to attend we would have to sent a police escort because of the report from the first crew, but if that he felt that the first crew were at fault, I could provide him with the complaints department phone number. At this point, the caller (who had been nice as pie during the first call) turned on me and started calling me all sorts of names not suitable for publication on this blog. He demanded to be put through to my supervisor, and, when I explained my supervisor did not deal with complaints and was tied up trying to locate a RTA call from a person who didn’t know where he was, he demanded to be put through to Gordon Brown, as apparently Gordon Brown is my Big Boss. I explained that we weren’t actually located in Downing Street and that Gordon Brown was asleep. I offered the complaints department number once again. The caller refused to take it, and demanded to be put through. Why should he pay for the phone call to make a complaint? I pointed out that they were closed, and I could put him through if he liked, but he’d just get the answerphone. “PUT ME THROUGH NOW!” he bellowed, and not one to refuse a caller’s request, I did.

“This is the complaints department of the LAS. The department is open 9-5, Monday to Friday. Please leave your name and number after the tone.”

I decided to stay on the line message the caller left, partly in case he started issuing death threats or anything else we should be aware of, and partly out of sheer nosiness. It was 4am on Sunday so there weren’t any calls waiting. It went something like this:

“I’ve just had one of your crews round and they were ***** and ***** and *********! They didn’t know what they were doing. They were just jealous because I live in one of the best houses in [an unglamorous, suburban part of London]! I pay my taxes! I demand Gordon Brown does something about this service! And that ********* person I just spoke to has put me through to the wrong number. I wanted the boss, not an answerphone! ****** and ********! You’re all useless!”

And it went on for another five minutes or so, until the automated voice cut in and said “Thank you. Your message has been recorded. Goodbye”.

In all that time, he still hadn’t given his name or contact details. Oh dear.

Ian Beale calling for an ambulance:
“Ambulance. We’re on the top floor. It’s a block of flats. A big block of flats. I don’t know what it’s called. ” [Lucy shouts something that sounds like “Rsomethingside House”] “Rsomethingside House! My wife’s been SHOT! Just come quick! What? Yeah. Police.”

That’s ALL he said, and yet somehow the ambulance managed to get there within ORCON and whisk poor Jane to hospital. Now, I know it would probably spoil the flow of the storyline for Ian to spend too much time talking to 999, but he could at least have given an intelligible address with some kind of indication of which area he was in and answered a couple of questions (as another character, Garry, did in a recent storyline when he saw a child get run over). It’s no wonder callers ring 999 and shout things like “I’m in a big block of flats on the main road!” and expect us to know exactly where they mean. Please Mr BBC, don’t make our jobs even harder with these poor examples!

Occasionally, we get wildly inappropriate calls which are not your usual brand of timewaster but people who do not know where to turn and are using 999 as a kind of general helpline. I often wonder what makes them request ‘ambulance’ instead of ‘police’ or ‘fire’ - I guess it’s just that they see police as scary law enforcers and don’t want an entire engine full of firemen turning up, so ambulance is the only option left.

One such call came in this week, at around 8pm. It was from a woman in her 80s who was a carer for her disabled, bedbound sister, who was even older. The little old lady was very upset because the lightbulb in her sister’s bedroom had broken. Apparently, her sister was scared of the dark, never switched the light out and suffered from panic attacks. The caller wanted to know if we could arrange someone to come round and change the lightbulb. She’d pay, if necessary, she just couldn’t find anyone to do it. She had no nearby relatives, no carers, her neighbours were all equally elderly and she didn’t know what to do because her sister was getting more and more distressed by the minute. The call taker, quite rightly, told the caller that she was sorry but that she couldn’t help because we only deal in ambulances and not lightbulb changing people. She recorded all the details, including the address, on a ticket, which duly popped up on our screen as an “enquiry only”.

“Hmm,” said the allocator. “How many ambulances have we got sitting on station at the moment?”

“Three,” I counted. “One at Edmonton, one at Tottenham and one at Bounds Green.” (This is very unusual for 8pm; for some reason no one in North London fancied a trip to hospital that night.)

“And look,” said the allocator. “There’s H702 on their way back from hospital. They’re going to have to drive right past this lady’s house to get back to station. Mark, could you please call them up on the radio and ask them for a mobile number so I can speak to them in private?”

I got H702’s mobile number and the allocator rang the crew, who no doubt thought they were in trouble.

“Bit of an odd request here,” she began. “How are you at changing lightbulbs? Yes, lightbulbs. See, we’ve had this call… [she explained the call] and it’s just up the road. There’s a couple of vehicles on station so I doubt you are about to get a call, but if you do I’ll call you on this mobile number and you’ll have to drop the lightbulb and run.”

The allocator then rang back the old lady to tell her we had managed to find someone after all, but in future she would have to sort out a regular lightbulb changer as we wouldn’t do it again. Fortunately, no calls came in in that area and ten minutes later, H702 were back in their vehicle, leaving behind two very satisfied customers.

“After all,” said the allocator, “if I hadn’t sent them, she would be phoning in three hours later when her sister was in the midst of a panic attack. And that would take far longer to sort out. Prevention is better than cure, that’s what I say.”