Working around idiots....

[digger242j]

This one's mainly to vent....

Today I was doing some rather delicate work. The undeground electrical service has already been installed at the site, but the buildings were not constructed as originally designed. Thus, some of the electric company's boxes have ended up right in the middle of driveways and consequently, I have to uncover about 150' of wire so that the boxes can be relocated. There's only about 6' between the garage doors and the edge of the pavement, and the trench is located right at the edge of the pavement.

This afternoon, I'm digging and getting pretty close to one of the existing boxes, so I'm pretty focused on that. The backhoe is sitting at a little bit of an angle to the work, so I'm looking mainly at one side of the hoe. The boom is about 5' above the ground. A carpenter walks out of the garage and ducks *right* under the boom, between the tractor and the dipper. I never saw him until he was there under the boom. Fortunately, the bucket was all the way at the bottom of the hole, so I couldn't really have lowered the boom very far anyway, but there's no way *he* could have known that. Had I been 6 inches higher with the boom, and put it down quickly at just the wrong time, I could have broken his neck.

HOW THE HECK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DEAL WITH BEHAVIOR LIKE THAT??


:beatsme

 

[leadarrows]

That's a good question.
Just the other day I was spreading a load of stone in a small driveway and some kid just pulls up in front of me and hopes off his bike and laid it down right at the end of the drive. I had too stop spreading,let the bed down and get out to make him move it. I yelled at him when he first did it but he just ignored me till I got out. I wanted to drive over that bike real bad but .......you know.

 

[PAYTON]

dig the hole a lil deeper break his neck bury him in the hole.. make an example out of it..

not alot you acn do. try taping the area off next time. it may help ya out.

i hate idiots.. maybe thats why theres only a few people i can work with .. and if you didnt know us you would think we hate each other. he screams at me cuss's me.. and i do the same to him.. from time to time we eve n throw **** at each other. but when the works done. we go grab a beer together and smile cause were really good buddies out side of work..

payton

 

[Dirtguru]

Not really an idiot story but it easily could have been. Early last fall I was contracted by one of the forest service districts around here to remove 3 CMP's and replace with 3 larger CMP's in anticipation of some major runoff from an area that was burned in a wildfire last summer. All work was paid for by the hour and to save money the F.S. provided there own dumptrucks and some guys from there firecrew for labor so what should have taken 3 days at the most wound up taking seven. Anyway, the big deadline was to have the road open by opening day of Elk season. The last culvert was a 24" which was replaced by a 60" half round with an inlet of 4' deep from centerline, outlet 16' deep from centerline. As you can imagine this required a huge hole which also had to be wide enough to get my excavator into so I could build a bench and place rip rap for a splash apron. On the morning before opening day I arived at about 6:00 AM to find a couple sitting in lawn chairs on the edge of the trench, drinking their morning coffee, behind them was a brand new Dodge pickup pulling a brand new 32' fifth wheel. They seemed relieved to see me and had a sense of humor about the fact that they had almost driven there brand new rig into a 16' deep hole, paper plates and all. They had arrived around midnight, ignored the road closed barricade 3 mi back at the last intersection and continued on there merry way. At 12:10 AM the next morning, opening day, I had managed to get one section of pipe in and backfilled which gave them a 10' wide path around a corner, barely enough for them to tip toe through and get on there way. It took 3 more days to complete the project because every time I turned around there would be cars and pickups lined up in both directions full of hunters with a serious case of Elk Fever all of which completely ignored the road closed signs and most of which were not too happy when they got to me.

A Chapman

 

[PAYTON]

Originally posted by Dirtguru
all of which completely ignored the road closed signs and most of which were not too happy when they got to me.

A Chapman

see thats where i would have been an *******.. road closed means road closed.. back that bitch up.. sorry bout your luck! yeah im a **** but thats me..

 

[Dirtguru]

Forest Service around here has a policy which requires them and anyone employed by them to BE POLITE AND SHOW RESPECT TO THE PUBLIC because it's public land. As far as the public was concerned I was POLITE AND RESPECTFUL since it was 28 deg outside and snowing lightly I kept all my comments nice and warm inside my cab. Trust me there were many times I just stayed right in the middle of the road and kept right on working until one of the drivers or fire crew had heard enough and came over to ask me to please let the traffic go by. When it's just me and my own crew we are usually not as inclined to be POLITE AND SHOW RESPECT TO THE PUBLIC. Road closed means road closed, in some cases we are required to allow traffic to pass for 15 minutes of every hour and have a pilot car, trouble is there is usually so little traffic that only we know when that 15 minutes begins which is almost always an hour after you get there. HA!

A Chapman

 

[tylermckee]

I was swinging sand into a garage while i was waiting for my perimeter drain inspection. Inspecter starts walking towards the garage as im swinging back for another load of sand. nearly sent him sailing towards the street. I never seen a guy run so fast. He was a little shook up and he didnt even really check my drains just said it looked good and signed the card

 

[Squizzy246B]

There are some wonderful people in this world... We had to do a job some time back in front of a cafe opposite a hospital. With the cities approval we cordoned off a parking bay in which we could load out the truck. There was absolutley no other place to park that wouldn't block a priority road and also prevent ambulances from getting to/from the hospital.

Anyway, the truck heads off to the dump and I'd dooking around the backyard in the skid. I go out the front to clean the footpath and wait for the truck. A big mercedes comes up the road, runs over three of our witches hats and parks in our loading bay. I'm standing there in amazement while the guy jumps out and goes into a house a few doors up.

Next our truck comes back and blocks the street. I tell my guy to park Hard over against the Merc. The guy comes out and starts screaming about how can we do that and do we have no respect etc etc... So I go slower for awhile... then..because the guy is hurling abuse at everybody I tell my guy to back up a little and let the guy out. Mr Merc drivers gets in and floors it, without looking, straight out and hits a hospital delivery truck.

At least he didn't have far to go to hospital...and I gave his license plate and a statement to the police...turns out the guy is a Doctor, not from the hospital but some specialist, suit wearing, Merc driving, overpaid, golf playing, world revolves around me jerkoff.

 

[Steve Frazier]

I'll bet you shed a tear over that one, eh Sqizzy?:wink

 

[Squizzy246B]

I'll bet you shed a tear over that one, eh Sqizzy?:wink

I lay awake at night worrying about him :angel

 

[smalltime]

I have two stories for everyone.
1. We were working in a "i am better than you" neighborhood when a guy pulled up to one of our operators & motioned for him to kill the engine, which he did. The suit then told him that if he did not stop getting dirt on the road & making his car muddy, he was going to send us the car wash bills. Our operator told him that if he did not quit interupting his work day, he would clean the street with his a**. The guy never said another word.

2. I was grading a two lane road to a driving range. We would bring one side up, compact it, then bring the other lane up. I had done this all day with everyone driving by being very understanding & polite. Near the end of the day, a car load of young punks drove by me doing at least 30 m.p.h. They were screaming & throwing trash out of their windows. Guess they forgot there was only one way in & one way out. OOPS. Since the low rider Cavalier they were in barely cleared the ground anyway, I figured a few bumps would give them a ride to remember. I graded the stone with about a 6 inch drop, then about a 6 inch rise 20 - 30 feet away from the drop. When they came flying back through, I just sat back, watched & laughed my head off as they hit those bumps & the sparks & stone flew!!!!!!

 

[Bob Horrell]

I was recently working in one of those "I'm better than you neighborhoods" and had to back my truck and trailer off a main road into a little side road. To do this I ended up blocking traffic for a very short time period. I back my rig almost every day and can back into almost any situation without making any adjustments, so the delay for others was less than a minute.
As I stopped to start my backing, the traffic opposing me stopped and waited. Just as I started backing, a suit in a Mercedes comes up behind me and just lays on his horn. Not intermittent honking, but a steady blast. As I was almost finished with my move, I got out and went up to the guy and told him I would stay there until he stopped honking his horn. How long he waited was up to him.
He quit honking as he was giving me a dirty look and I got in and finished backing. As soon as there was enough room for him to get by, he floored it honking his horn and giving me the finger.
I figure the guy must have a miserable life to be such a jerk over such a small thing.

 

[digger242j]

Good move on your part, Bob! :drinkup

Not construction related, but a good story nevertheless--Waay back when, my Grandfather had an old Model T (or something similar), that you had to hand crank to start. One day, at an intersection, he stalled. In those days, streetcars were a pretty common site around town, and the tracks were literally embedded in the street. As it happened, where he stalled was on the cars tracks, and soon enough, a streetcar came along. Grandpa was cranking and cranking, and couldn't get the thing to start. The streetcar conductor started ringing the bell, and wouldn't stop. It didn't take Grandpa too long to stop cranking, and walk back to the streetcar and say, "How about you go on up there and crank for a while, and I'll sit here and ring the #@@$#^*% bell...."

 

[littledenny]

Also not construction related, but an old story my Grandfather always told us:

Many years ago, my Grandfather farmed several hundred acres, near Bath, South Dakota. This was back when there wasn't anything between Bath and Aberdeen, (which now has as much urban sprawl as any other little town in the midwest).

A couple, driving some 60's vintage land barge came flying down the snowy road, and put it into the ditch. Grandpa, drove past and stopped to help, on his way back home. (this was back when neighbors helped neighbors.)

Grandpa knew his pickup didn't have the grunt to pull out that big car, especially with all the snow around, so he offered to go home, get something more suitable, and pull the couple out. He was back 20 minutes later with his eight tired tractor.

As he got out to discuss things, the wife said "you're not going to pull this brand new X thousand dollar Caddy out with that old tractor, are you?

Grandpa simply said "I won't pull your X thousand dollar Caddie out with my 3X thousand dollar tractor if you don't want me to."

The husband quickly assessed the situation, hushed his wife, and proceeded to help hitch up the chains.

Grandpa always snickered about this one.

 

[alan627b]

We were doing the site grading on one of those golf course neighborhoods a few years ago, and had 6 or 7 627's on a 1/4 mile haul. Going full tilt as usual.
Some engineer is driving around the site with a woman in a black Suburban, windows up, A/C on, and pulls out onto the haul road right when I shift up into 6th gear, about 100 feet or so in front of me.
Even if that scraper had brakes, which it didn't, it's not gonna stop on a dime, so I had to swerve waaay over to the side of the haul road to avoid creaming him. Which had a 6 foot drop off at the edge at that part...
It was lunch time anyway, so when I got to camp, I told the boss what happened, and said something like "Somebody ought to tell that engineer to watch out when he's on the job" although probably not worded that politely!
He told me to go for it...
I get up to where this engineer is now standing around, and not losing my cool, asked him if he was an engineer.
He says yes, so I presented him with an engineering question.
"What do you suppose would happen if a 7000 pound Chevy suburban gets run over by 100,000 pounds of Caterpillar scraper"?
He then got a lecture about it's braking abilities, right of way on haul roads and the good idea of leaving a window down when driving on the job, so you could hear what you didn't see...and how much it would suck to be responsible for killing someone, even if it isn't your fault...
And it worked too, he always was very careful onsite after that.
I'm just glad that on most dirt jobs, we're the only idiots onsite til the work is over!
Let's be careful out there!
alan627b

 

[King of Obsolete]

my daddy told me a long time ago

IT IS HARD TO SOAR LIKE AN EAGLE WHEN YOU WORK WITH TURKEYS

thansk

 

[bigbucket]

Alan you should have gotten a little closer to that jerk before you swerved off to the side. Maybe if he needs to change his shorts once or twice he will start looking where he is going.

 

[JimBruce42]

We were doing the site grading on one of those golf course neighborhoods a few years ago, and had 6 or 7 627's on a 1/4 mile haul. Going full tilt as usual.
Some engineer is driving around the site with a woman in a black Suburban, windows up, A/C on, and pulls out onto the haul road right when I shift up into 6th gear, about 100 feet or so in front of me.
Even if that scraper had brakes, which it didn't, it's not gonna stop on a dime, so I had to swerve waaay over to the side of the haul road to avoid creaming him. Which had a 6 foot drop off at the edge at that part...
It was lunch time anyway, so when I got to camp, I told the boss what happened, and said something like "Somebody ought to tell that engineer to watch out when he's on the job" although probably not worded that politely!
He told me to go for it...
I get up to where this engineer is now standing around, and not losing my cool, asked him if he was an engineer.
He says yes, so I presented him with an engineering question.
"What do you suppose would happen if a 7000 pound Chevy suburban gets run over by 100,000 pounds of Caterpillar scraper"?
He then got a lecture about it's braking abilities, right of way on haul roads and the good idea of leaving a window down when driving on the job, so you could hear what you didn't see...and how much it would suck to be responsible for killing someone, even if it isn't your fault...
And it worked too, he always was very careful onsite after that.
I'm just glad that on most dirt jobs, we're the only idiots onsite til the work is over!
Let's be careful out there!
alan627b

Oddly enough, the one foreman I worked with this summer would do the same thing in front of our A30's... course we have brakes

 

[Squizzy246B]

Oddly enough, the one foreman I worked with this summer would do the same thing in front of our A30's... course we have brakes

Well..???.. did you use them?

 

[Dozerboy]

We had some 657s running on a job out here with a long haul. And they where cheaping out and didn't want to pay the water truck driver to start early for dust control. Some dumb surveyor decided to drive this truck down the haul road with the dust they never saw the truck 3 of the scrapers ran it over before anyone got stopped. You can guess the out come.