Logic!

 

I think I missed my true vocation as a 'Project Manager'.

We've had pipe-laying road works in the road behind the church since September (although it feels like much longer). I walk past here twice every day, so it's been a bit of a pain!

The men seem to work to a very bizarre pattern. They started at one end of the street, did some more at the bottom end, then fiddled about in the middle (where they are now), and they've been doing bits and pieces everywhere else in between. There has been no logic to their progression whatsoever, and no certainty about when (or if) they show-up. The photo below was taken at 9.30 am yesterday, and not a soul in sight.

Had I been in charge (and thank goodness for the men that I'm not), I would have made a logical progression from the top to bottom of the road.

Dig, lay pipe, back-fill, top with asphalt, roller. Then continue on to the end. Of course, by using my method the work would have been completed in a week, and they wouldn't have been able to claim all their 'time off' and triple-pay weekends. 

The other bizarre aspect to their work is that when they dig the metre-deep trenches, they take away all the detritus to dump somewhere, then refill with lorry loads of newly brought-in gravel. The old stuff they dug out was just as good as the new, but 'bureaucrats' don't think like that. They like to do things the 'official jobsworth way'. And 'The National Road Diggers and Fillers Union' (of which there must be a Union Steward on site) makes sure that everything is done the slowest and most expensive way possible.

I get on with the workmen quite well, and they all love Billy. I recently asked one of them if they'll be finished by the end of December, and he replied that he hoped so, as he was off to his villa in Tenerife for Christmas. It's a grand life!