Don't bother major airports, and probably not a military base

Thank you for being clear with this part.

My wife works in public safety and people say really stupid shit on Reddit about when to call 911, for which issues you should reasonably expect an immediate response (or any response), whether you should call repeatedly for a given issue, how you need to interact with the call taker, etc.

It's just so annoying listening to the ignorance, petulance, and entitlement people trot out against public safety employees.

Let me tell you, the odds they didn't care about you, didn't listen, or didn't understand the seriousness of your problem are pretty small compared to the odds you don't understand how insignificant your situation really is or don't understand what's happening behind the scenes.

For example, in 911 call centers a situation like "person can't breathe at all" is dispatched NOW. Within 10 seconds of figuring out what your problem is and being sure it's actually not breathing versus mere shortness of breath, the call taker or a separate dispatcher is already assigning an EMS or fire unit to go find you.

But during such calls - even after the call taker clearly, explicitly, repeatedly tells the caller someone is already coming - a solid 1/3 of callers will respond to further questions with confusion, indignation, or blatant verbal abuse. "Just fucking send em".

Likewise the two or three times I've seen news stories on Reddit about some 911 dispatcher getting in trouble for total dereliction or incompetence in dispatching a call there were dozens of responses where people had to share their moronic 911 dispatcher stories, full of asinine phrasing like "I had to light a fire under their ass" and "I had to curse up a storm before they listened to me" etc. etc.

It's just another place it's more convenient for people to believe others are incompetent or their situation is truly special even among emergencies than to believe they don't understand what's going on or they don't actually know the proper way for emergency services to treat situations.

Oh, I just though of another big example. Several times I've seen people on Reddit whine about a 911 call taker "just saying the same thing over and over". That's called repetitive persistence, and it's specifically what they're supposed to do when the caller can't or won't calm down and answer the questions they're being asked. Trust me, it's not stupidity or the easy response to just say precisely the same thing again, slowly and calmly, when someone is ignoring you or swearing at you or just freaking out. It's the harder response to do that, but it's what works and it's evidence of their training, not evidence for why they're dumb and it's a good thing you kept yelling.

And if I can rant this long about crap like this just knowing air traffic controllers, cops, and police dispatchers just imagine how frustrated they are about dealing with this arrogant bullshit from people all day.