Woman calls police over getting mushrooms on her pizza

Receiving the wrong takeaway order can be frustrating, but most of us manage to move on with our lives easily enough.

Not this woman. Furious that a takeaway company delivered a mushroom pizza instead of a meat feast, she rang Essex Police.

The audio was released as part of the More Time to Fight Crime campaign and its attempt to tackle inappropriate or hoax calls.

In the recording, when asked if she is OK, the woman tells the call handler:

No, I've been mugged off by a f***ing takeaway.

Would you believe it. 

For a moment, you want to give her the benefit of the doubt: maybe she meant mugged, er, in a takeaway restaurant?

Nope. She continued:

I rung up for a number 18 meat feast and she's trying to tell me nah, you ordered a number eight.

I'm allergic to mushrooms so I know for a fact that I didn't order a number 8, right?

And I've got a pizza sat here with a f***ing mushrooms on it that I can't eat.

£11.99 later and she doesn't want to help me out or nothing. 

When call handler tells her she should contact the takeaway directly, she said:

Well, I tried to. But I reckon she's the manager.

From potholes to abandoned vehicles, Essex Police receives 400 hoax or inappropriate calls each month, a figure that only increases in the summer.

Superintendent Kevin Baldwin, who heads up the force’s control room, said:

There’s nothing that frustrates my team more than picking up the phone on a 999 call only for it to be a call which plainly isn’t an emergency and is sometimes a deliberate hoax.

This is a very busy time of the year where we are working flat out, so answering a 999 call made by someone who should have a bit more common sense isn’t just infuriating, it could risk the life of someone who really needs us but can’t get through.

More: New York police department vows to change system which used initials to define an officer's race