The Lengths People Will Go to in Order to Avoid Work

[The Riff-Raff Element]

At the far end of our modest estate, beyond the wall, a line of trees

and a satisfactorily substantial fence lies an agricultural resevoir

that our neighbour the Miserable Mr Mateau uses to water his maize

crops. This last week he's been having some new pipework installed

around the pumphouse. This pumphouse, in order to fit in to the local

scene, is of rendered blocks and topped with a red tiled roof.

On Friday I was up the end of the garden removing the remains of an old

greenhouse. The job in hand, I saw, had been entrusted to the tender

care of two spotty herberts aged about 15 and equipped with a huge

excavator left behind from digging the trench for the pipes.

Now, the pipes they were installing where made of polypropylene or

somesuch, about 3m long, 20cm wide and weighing perhaps 30kg. I know

they weren't particularly heavy because I'd seen then being offloaded

by hand with ease earlier in the week. However, the herberts were

clearly in no mood to carry the twenty or so lengths of pipe the few

yards to the trench and drop them in.

Instead, over a period of about two hours they concocted a kind of

sling to attach to the digger arm. This they lashed around one of the

lengths of pipe and the less callow one climbed into the cab and

started the digger. He lifted the pipe and swung it over toward the

trench....and in the process knocked half the tiles off the pumphouse

roof.[Www]

[Dick Smith]

Those boys have talent and potential. They should be working for the government! I expect M. Miserable got them cheap but now realises how much cheap costs...

[Cassis]

Sounds like a good day's work.  Well done, lads.