“Yeah, this is a fun job” crowed Bob into his cell, as he gently, ever so gently worked his excavator to tunnel under the cement encased, electrical power conduit.
“I remember when I was young,” he continued. “My granddad bought me a Tonka steam shovel. We would play with that thing in his back yard for hours at a time and he’d joke that I was digging a hole so deep, I’d end up in China.”
“I guess I’ve always wanted to be a heavy machine operator.”
“What’s that?” he said; “no, this is the first time where I get to do all the jobs on the project. Last week, I had the jack hammer attachment on and I went down the street punching holes through the asphalt and concrete. That was loud, but that was nothing compared to my next step; prying up the huge pieces with my bucket attachment, lifting them high and then dropping them so that’d break.”
“That was so much fun, I especially loved how the ground shook when the big pieces hit the ground. The people in the houses here on the street weren’t happy, I could see that by how they glared at me… but man, this destruction is so much fun.”
“But no, its not all fun and games,” he said as he adjusted the phone braced in the crook of his neck. “Clearing up the mess and loading the trucks was a little boring… but everything in this job can’t be all fun.”
“Now this part I’m doing here requires skill, I’m digging down 8 feet to the old brick sewer line and then ripping it out so we can put in a new one. The skill part is that you have to ignore all the crap; and I mean that literarily, because the houses are still washing their dishes and flushing the toilets.”
“No,” he continued, “My machine is not only for digging, I also am a crane. They are going to attach straps to the huge, cement, sewer replacement pipes and my machine will lift them into place. Then of course I will have to back fill over the pipes with gravel, and that is also satisfying… but that will come later.”
“Right now,” he said as he switched the cell to his other side, “I have to finish digging this street block. This work takes great skill and finesse, especially when you have natural gas pipes under the street; if you hit one, all hell breaks lose, the fire department and the police come, they block off the streets, evacuate everyone from the houses and then finally the gas company comes and closes it off. Until then, there is a chance of an explosion.”
Then suddenly a geyser of dust and foul odor erupted just where he took his last scoop.
“Oh crap…” he said as he backed his excavator out of the gas plume… “I’ve hit a gas line. I’ll call you back.”