THE police have urged people to only use the 999 number for essential calls, after someone called to ask what time a supermarket opened, asked for help to get a snake out of their house and for officers to bring petrol to their home.

The West Yorkshire Police Contact Management Centre often tweet some of the more unusual phone calls they receive from the general public.

And this tweet this morning was no exception after a call to police from someone asking when a branch of Asda would be open.

In response, Warwickshire Police's Operations and Communications Centre (OCC) tweeted: "Is it bad that we're not even shocked?"

The West Yorkshire phone line have also received the following two time wasting calls, which they tweeted last night and this morning:

These follow three different occasions earlier this year when people have wrongly used the service for more unusual calls.

Someone used the service to complain about Royal Mail not delivering their parcel after they had initially given them the wrong postcode. 

An angry caller rang the emergency line to ask the service to ring their doctors as they were fed up of waiting 30 minutes to try to get through.

A caller also rang the number complaining they could not get chicken nuggets from a branch of McDonald’s.