Thursday, April 29, 2010

Is That Really a Job?

I was driving along today, a route I take often, and I knew there was construction afoot, because it's been ongoing for the past week or so. However, today, I would say my flabbers were gasted.

As I descended a hill, I saw that half of my lane and half the lane of oncoming traffic was cut off by red traffic cones. So all traffic needed to move to the right of their respective lanes. No problem. Except there was nothing happening other than those cones creating a new third lane that no one was driving on, and only went about 20 feet. Well, that's not entirely true.

On each side of the road was a guy holding a double sided sign. One side says slow, and one says stop. In normal situations, when there is only one lane and traffic must take turns using it, the two guys with the signs are placed on opposite ends of the one lane and turn their signs to keep traffic flowing safely. When one guy's sign says STOP, the other, facing opposite traffic, says SLOW.

But not today. Today, there was room for two lanes of dual directional traffic, just each was squeezed over a bit. These guys were literally standing there, each holding his sign saying SLOW to face his oncoming traffic. There was not a truck, shovel, or other person working or even drinking coffee in sight.

Granted it was a nice day, but when they go home at night and think back on their day, what do they think about what they accomplished today?

The whole thing was just bizarre.

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