The hardest job is standing around looking busy

You’ve seen them out there. It’s the season. The governmental repair stuff season (before all that FEMA money runs dry).

They’re the municipal guys in their municipal uniforms with the municipal patches on the short sleeve, their name on the shirtfront, the jangle of keys hanging from the belt.

Some guys carry a clipboard. Others, a radio. Looking busy. Tending to all that important governmental repair stuff that takes a team of professionals.

Like hanging a sign next to the sidewalk. Digging the hole in the road.

It’s never one guy. It’s always a team. The rookie is the one doing all the work, hefting the shovel, hauling the peat, sweating BUCKETS in the heat, dying for a drink of water.

The veteran is doing all the monitoring from his air conditioned cool-as-can-be municipal truck cab while listening to Swap Shop on the AM radio (“I’d like to trade my four chickens for a 21-inch lawnmower blade.”)

And all the others in the circle of observation? Their job is to do all the looking. And look busy doing it. The Industrial Observers. The IOs.

To passers by, it looks easy. Too easy, maybe.

You can just hear Maude (age 75) screaming to her deaf husband Homer (age 78) as they drive by a work site in their 1960s Buick Skylark, “What in the hailfire all them guys just STANDING AROUND fur?”

And the husband says, “Whaddya say?”

The wife says, “Them guys, in them uniforms, just standing around fur?”

The husband says, ”What guys, where?”

“Aww, furgitit, Homer,” she says. “You ain’t never seen nothing in your life. When’s the last time you looked at ME?”

“Who?” Homer says. “Are them guys lookin’ at you? I’m turning ‘round. Show them who’s lookin’ at who.”

Maude was referring to, of course, the IOs.

It is not easy being an IO. Making it look easy is the hard part. There is a lot of high-grade schooling behind it.

You can get a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Observation. Look it up. A four year-degree program. Somewhere. Perhaps at Gooberville Community College. (And let The Paper’s Editor Emeritus Bill Poteat know what you found. He was a teacher once.)

An effective, credentialed IO has to have a knowledge base of phenomenal industrial stuff, especially if they have ambitions of rising to the top of their field, beyond digging holes in the road or painting parking lines like the pros. The top spot: Sitting in the truck.

A typical curriculum for an ambitious IO consists of the following:

• Asphalt.
• Standing Around 101
• Standing Around 201 (with Lab)
• Standing Around 301 (Advanced)
• Clipboard Carrying
• Looking Busy While Thinking About Lunch
• Watching the Guy With the Shovel
• Watching the Guy Watching the Guy With the Shovel
• Pointing at Dirt
• Discussing Dirt
• Traffic Cone Philosophy
• Heavy Equipment Admiration
• Pickup Truck Shade Studies
• Quittin’ Time Forecasting

I don’t know how they do it. So much to know. So much to do. Multitasking like nobody’s business.

I called the local OSAH rep to learn more. I always thought that the OSAH people were an Advanced Breed of IOs, along the lines of aliens who built the pyramids. These wizards could size up the scale, scope, magnitude, safety, and legality of any project anywhere. Especially in concrete pipe plants.

Not so. OSAH stands for Others Standing Around Helping. They are just a bunch of bored IOs who cashed in a local government job for a federal one.

Robert Foster is Burke and Caldwell’s local OSAH rep. He works out of the El Paso, Texas office. I got him on about the 450th ring in his construction site trailer.

“Foster,” he said.

“Lemme ask you,” I said. “Why does fixing a pothole in a city street require a team of 13 guys standing around holding shovels looking supremely interested, an older guy with a clipboard sitting in an air conditioned truck listening to radio, another guy waving cars by, and some poor young, sweaty schmuck up to his neck in dirt, sewer pipes, gutter trash, dead rats, and old asphalt?”

“Where?” he asked.

I told him. Right here. In North Carolina. Where it is southern summertime hot.

“Oh,” he said. “You think it’s hot in North Carolina? Try down here. I am a MILE from MEXICO. You wanna talk about HOT? You wanna talk about SWEAT?”

“You are our local OSAH representative,” I said. “Says so right here on the website. I just want to know why OSAH requires so many people to do what looks like could be done with fewer.”

“Look,” Foster said. “I don’t know how they do it in … Where’d you say you are?”

I told him.

“Whereever,” he said. “I don’t have any idea. All I know is that there are budget cuts, staff shortages, project halts, equipment failures, personnel issues every-damn-where, and they pulled me from sweet Virginia to put me in this hot hellhole called El Paso.”

He added, “You know how many people it takes to inspect the guys inspecting the guys standing around? We had 17 in Texas alone. Now we’re down to 11. ELEVEN! And you want a comment on WHAT?”

Makes you appreciate the profession. Anybody can dig a hole. It takes years of education to stand around one.