I have been in situations where someone asks for help and I do help out and later find out that I am being played. Like when I was working at the Far Side Lounge and my co-workers would ask me to work their shift claiming some sort of problem in their lives but then I find out that it was a lie. Once when a co-worker had a sprained ankle and said he couldn't work (showed up later that night at the lounge to dance in the pub to the live band we had playing) or one girl said she had a big exam the next morning she was pulling an all nighter to study for (again, in the bar from 8pm to 1am drinking quite heavily). Sometimes it is more of a support and shoulder to cry on like when in camp the baker that was on nights with me would come in and be in a huge state claiming her boyfriend was cheating on her and that she was too stressed to work and had me pick up some extra tasks to help get the work done only later to find out that she had been single for years and there was no boyfriend. However, this had to be the worst time to be lied to.
This just happened this evening. I was just finishing up supper with the Mrs when the phone rang and it came up as an unknown name. I was waiting for a call from a friend who has her number blocked for privacy so I answered the call. I got a strange lady's voice talking to me asking me if I had a nice evening and how my Easter weekend was. Suddenly she starts to break down to sobs claiming how her nephew just got shot on a reserve, she couldn't contact her family members and she was contemplating suicide. She sounded drunk the more she talked so I listened. The call lasted a little over 6 minutes with it mainly being her talking incoherently about depression and suicide. Finally when I hung up I was wondering what the proper thing to do was so I looked the number up on Telus as a reverse look up and nothing came up. I looked on google (780-977-2028) and it said that it was a cell phone number that can not be named. I called the Suicide Crisis line here (didn't get the name of the guy but he was extremely sympathetic and professional) and they gave me a number to the Mental Health Crisis Team (got a girl who was extremely short and curt with me...guess she must have been extremely busy tonight which is sort of scary considering her line of work) who told me to call 911. So I called 911 and was connected with the police who took the number and put me on hold. They came back a few minutes later and it turns out that it was a party with a few people drinking and a couple got a hold of someones cell phone and decided to make a few crank phone calls to which I got to be a lucky recipient of. I was expecting to hear from the officer that they were going to press charges and needed my name and number to make a statement but instead all I got was "we (the police) have suggested to the owner of the cell phone that they might want to keep a closer hold on their cell phone during drinking parties".
At the time of the call I wasn't really shaken and actually found it interesting that after speaking with the first suicide crisis line that the guy (who sounded extremely sympathetic and listened really well) mentioned that receiving a call like this is extremely stressful and if I needed someone to talk to I was more than welcome to call back and discuss it with them. I think right now I am more annoyed than stressed about the call.
So yeah, guess it is moments like this that make me really wonder about helping others out there if when I get asked for help I have to ask myself "do they really require help or are they just being lazy or pranking me?"
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