Stopping for Signs

Today I was driving to meet my friend so we could walk our dogs and I came up to a 4-way stop. Standing under each of the stop signs was a highway flagger person holding a metal sign with “slow” on one side and “stop” on the other. There was no construction being done as far as the eye could see.

The person facing my side of the traffic had his sign turned to “slow.” The car in front of me pulled forward. When I stopped (because of the Stop sign), he started waving the sign for me to proceed slowly.

I don’t know what the guy’s big hurry was. There were no other cars in the entire intersection, and no construction going on, and even he could figure out I’d stopped out of habit, so why’d he threw a hissy fit?

This job cannot be that difficult.

“Okay, you’re going to hold this sign here at this stop sign, and when the cars get close, you want to wave it in the air like this to make ‘em stop. Then you make ‘em wait a few minutes while you look back and forth like there’s something you need to check, and take a puff or two on your cigarette, and then you slowly turn the sign around and let ‘em go. You got that?”

“Whoa, that’s a lot to remember. You better run that by me again a little slower.”

“Okay, now that I’ve gone over it a second time, you think you can handle it?”

“You say I need to take a puff off my cigarette? But I don’t smoke.”

“Holy Jiminy Christmas.. Where do they get you guys? If you don’t smoke, you should. In the meantime, just pick your nose or scratch your ass or whatever you can think of to stall ‘em.”

“Why can’t I just let them go right away?”

“Now what on God’s green earth would be the point of that? You want to make this job fun, don’t you? Well, it ain’t no fun if you just let ‘em go without teasing them a little. If you hold them off long enough, they’ll start squirming in their seats a little, and then they’ll start slapping their fists against the steering wheel. I get a real kick out of that. It’s pretty entertaining on a long shift in the rain. Otherwise your days are going to seem like they last 60 hours. Is that what you want?”

“Well, I…”

“And another thing. You start letting people through in a hurry and you’re going to make the rest of us look bad. We stick together in this job, and you better get that through you head right now. If that’s not something you think you can handle, then you’d better hang up your sign. You finally got all that?”

“I guess so.”

“You’ve taken me well over five minutes to train you, and now I’m way behind. I hope you learn to pay attention out here or else find yourself another line of work.”

“I just…”

“Don’t give me no lip, boy. Now get a holt of that sign and get out there and start slowin’ down some traffic like I told you.”

When I went back home this morning, I took another route. I didn’t have the time to waste watching the State of Oregon spend 4 times the money needed on construction crews waving signs to tell me to do the obvious. I’m sure Oregon had good intentions this morning, but you know what they say about good intentions? The road to Hell may be paved with them, but the road to the dog park is paved with tax dollars and nincompoops.