Waffles Not Cooked? Call 911 Immediately

Here are several reasons to call the police: You feel physically unsafe or fear an intruder; your animal companion has escaped up a light pole that no way in hell are you going to climb; you just want to say hello and see how your friends in blue are doing and whether there’s anything good going on down at the station. (Don’t do that last one, though. No one will be pleased with you.)

Here’s a reason not to call the police: Your waffles are uncooked and you need an authorized agent of the state to enforce that they reach a proper golden-brown before you leave the Village Inn you are casually dining at.

A Florida woman did not take this advice when she called the Tampa Bay police emergency number because she wasn’t going to pay for a whole waffle when only half of it was cooked. I don’t know much about waffles, by the way, but I wonder what that even looks like. Does she mean that one half of the waffle is just cold, or that it’s still a liquid mass of batter dripping off the plate? (I think it’s probably the former, but if it was the latter, maybe the call wasn’t so unwarranted?) (Can any waffle connoisseurs chime in?)

The video of the call was released on Youtube on Friday to warn others not to waste the time of 911 operators in a non-emergency. They’ll be patient (the operator here is a consummate delight), but they certainly won’t be happy, even if you offer to take a breathalyzer and everything because you’re not paying for no half-cooked waffle and someone had better take it off the bill RTFN. That’s a civil matter.