You have to work hard to be this stupid

[cameraman]

I'm driving to work this morning and I come upon a fine example of inbred good old boy abject stupidity at its finest. This is in the oldest part of town and the streets are narrow, the lots are small and the sewer lines are 100 years old. So some local plumbing contractor has his Cat excavator out and he is digging a trench from the house out to the street. It was probably the smallest model that is a full-sized excavator, the kind you see on a flatbed trailer towed by a dump truck. Low 31x in the Cat lineup. Well this mid-50s fat POS operating the machine was working hard to ignore the cracked hydraulic connector on the hose that bridges the boom and arm joint. Cracked on the arm side. It was sending forth a gigantic rooster tail of hydraulic fluid as he dug. This wasn't a subtle leak, this was a fire hose backlit by the morning sun, a truly impressive sight. He is digging away, soaking the house and the trees and just about everything within 50' of the machine. Just as I drive by this ****wit he rotates all the way around and just painted my car with oil as I drove by. He hadn't rotated that far before or I wouldn't have gone by. I pulled over up the block and just watched him continue to dig. And he did continue. He kept going until the machine finally just froze up midscoop due to lack of fluid. He must have sprayed 30+ gallons of oil over everything within 50' of that machine. The house was just soaked with oil just dripping off the roof and walls and windows. The trees were soaked, the gardens & lawn and his own truck were just soaked. I just shook my head and drove off to the car wash...

I pity the owner of that 150 year old house:shakehead:

[stroker]

too bad you didn't get video on your phone that you could have supplied to his employer. I'm sure the insurance company would have liked to see it, too.

[Gnam]

What an *******.
It was probably a rental that he broke but was too lazy to call for a repair.

If he was an employee at any large construction firm, then Safety, Environmental, Maintenance, and management would have sent him home and started the termination paperwork. Being that irresponsible is expensive.

[Tifosi24]

He clearly not part of the Operator's union! If you lived in Minnesota, a discharge of that much fluid would probably be a reportable release to the pollution control folks.

[cameraman]

Union?!?!? What on earth is a union? This is Utah the only unions in this state of any value are at the Kennecott mine or the UPS drivers.

It was an independent plumber. The whole company probably numbers less than 5 people.

[Insomniac]

Or he really is that apathetic.

[Gnam]

Dramatic Recreation: not to scale.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ614rOsO2w

[cameraman]

It was that exactly with a smaller machine except he ran it for a good 10 minutes.

[nrc]

Maybe he thought it looked cool.

I agree with Gnam. Rental equipment and he was just hoping he could get the job done before it ran dry. That's why I love Angie's List. You can't operate like that and not get hammered to the bottom of the ratings.