Well
as always, I’m just full of new ideas that are just ready to be exploited by
someone waiting to make a zillion bucks. This week I’ve invented the automatic
stand-alone shovel. Now, this may seem odd to you, but the way I figure it, this
novel invention will save the taxpayers of this country untold millions of
dollars ever year in labor costs. These saved millions can then be used for new
schools, better police departments and yes even to fight corruption in
government. Something we need a lot of money for these days. So what you may ask
does my automatic stand-alone shovel have to do with all of this you might
ask?
Good question. Here’s the
answer…When you drive by a road construction site, what do you see? Think
about this. It’s the same all over the country and even in other parts of the
world. In some parts of the world it’s worse than here. Give up?
Well, you see 8 or 10 guys standing
around holding up a shovel while 1 guy is actually doing some kind of work in
the ditch or on the road. I figure it must be some kind of Federal mandate that
requires shovels to be standing straight up rather than propped up or lying on
the ground. Obviously some kind of safety issue is at stake here. Probably was
some kind of million-dollar study done to prove that more accidents are caused
by shovels lying horizontal than by those standing vertically. I’ll have to do
some more research on this.
Anyway, back to my point. Now,
before you get all riled up and say that your Uncle Bill worked on a
construction crew and he was always hard at work. Let me qualify my theory. You
see, there are 2 kinds of road worker, ok maybe 3 if you throw in chain gangs,
but I don’t think we even have those anymore, and besides they aren’t being
discussed in this article. The 2 kinds I’m talking about are the for profit
and the not for profit. The for profit kind are made up of folks that put
together a bid on the road work and then if they win, they go out and do the
work for the government. Whoever that might be.
Now I don’t have any way of
proving this point, but it’s my belief that the for profit companies must bid
on these jobs by the hour. In other words, the more hours they work, the longer
it takes for the road to get completed. Ergo, more money for the company.
There’s a road under construction in my hometown that has been getting built
since I was about 5 years old and they still aren’t finished with it yet.
I’ve passed the same guys holding up those shovels for over 25 years. I’ve
watched these men grow old holding up those shovels. They must be bored to death
by the time they retire. I imagine in their obituary you’d probably read
something like this…"John Doe…passed away yesterday. Spent his entire
working career holding up a shovel on Highway 100 for the Acme Construction
Company. He will be missed.
" Well, wouldn’t you just go
nuts if you had to stand around all day doing the same thing? I’d want to be
traded off for the guy in the pit or something. The supervisors seem to have to
spend their time sitting in the front seat of a pickup truck watching the guys
holding up the shovels who are watching the guy actually working. It’s a toss
up to me to determine which guy has the hardest job, the one in the ditch or the
guys standing around doing nothing. Anyway, the other type of road crews are the
governmental road crew. I know I don’t have to educate you, on the exercise in
futility here. I think it was in 1904 that Congress passed the "No
Government Worker Should Ever Have To Be Alone" bill. This was originally
designed to prevent workers from getting lonesome and depressed.
While it may have had good
intentions when it first came out; it has been diluted now to insure that
workers are always surrounded by at least 4 or 5 others at all times. I think
this also has to do with keeping track of government equipment since no one can
steal the truck if 5 guys all need it to get a ride back home. Safety in numbers
or something like that. Well, it’s a mystery to me how any of this ever gets
completed in the first place. After thinking it over, I may not want to patent
this novel invention of mine after all. I may want to watch the paper and bid on
that portion of the job where they set out those orange cones on the highway. It
seems to me that for every 3 workers at the actual point of construction, there
is at least 1 mile of cones leading up to the site. I suppose you get paid so
much for setting the cones out to slow the traffic down, then you’d get paid
so much for picking them up later on in the day. So, if there were 9 men on the
job site, you’d need about 3 miles of cones. If we placed them 10 feet apart,
then you’d need about about 1,584 of them to do the job. If we bid the job out
at, say $1.25 per cone. I’d get $1,980 bucks for putting them out and another
$1,980 for picking them up. Almost 4 grand in one day. Not too shabby a deal,
I’d say. Look for me on the construction site in your neighborhood. I look
just like my picture. In fact I look better than my picture. I’m often
confused with Hugh Grant and Brad Pitt.
As always, send you great and
wonderful comments to me at www.pearyperry.com.
And as always, keep your sarcasm to yourself.
