Are McNuggets a 911 Emergency?

McDonald's charged a 27 year old woman for an order of chicken mcnuggets they couldn't produce. The employees offered her a different food choice, but the woman wanted her money back. Insistent that it was non-refundable, the employees refused to refund Latreasa L Goodman for the food. Upset over the situation, Goodman dialed 911 three times in succession.

Goodman is now facing charges of misusage of the 911 hotline. To be fair, the officers and operator tried more than once to explain to Goodman that the issue was not an emergency. Goodman was insistent that being charged and refused a refund for a product that they no longer had in stock, was an emergency. She was robbed.

Carlos Soloranzo, the operations manager for this McDonalds, has issued a public apology to Ms. Goodman. He has said he will refund her full purchase and give her another meal free of charge.

The case is rather amusing to most of us. How would you handle this situation? Most of us would have asked to speak to managment, and if the situation was not resolved satisfactorily used a hotline number for the chain to report the incident. We may also have chosen to send emails to the restaurant or the local newspaper.

Few of us would have deemed this a police matter. Fewer of us would have though 911 was there to handle a case such as this. This story, while providing a few laughs, is also an interesting spark to the debate of overworked 911 hotlines. This is a public case of how badly these hotlines are mistreated.

The abuse of the hotlines makes it difficult for officers to truly respond to those in emergency in timely fashion. When they are flooded with silly calls such as this, that is time they are having to take away from the domestic violence reports, and other important calls.

While it is encouraging to see McDonalds is apologetic and going to make full restitution to this customer, it is also heartening to note that this women is going to be punished for the abuse of the hotline. She deserves the charges of misuse and more people need to be aware that there are repurcissions for such foolish usage of emergency hotlines.

Included in this article is a link to hear the reported 911 calls.