I’m a lorry driver and drive a tipper trailer for a living. I’m at a jobsite that is more or less across the street from a kindergarten. The site is an elevated lot with a wall separating it and the street. A digger, clearly visible from anywhere on the street, is on the lot loading rocks on a trailer standing on the street no more than a metre from said wall. While we have no guards, there are signs in both directions telling pedestrians to go on the other side of the street.

I’m standing behind the lorry being loaded talking to my colleague who is driving it. He has a passenger who has decided to stay in it. While we’re talking, we suddenly see a woman with a kid in each hand hurriedly emerge from between the trailer and the wall and then cross the street towards the school while the two of us stand there mouth agape, too stunned to say anything.

We go to the front to see if the sign is still there, which it is, and we talk to my colleague’s astonished passenger who tells us he told the woman repeatedly that she could not walk there but she ignored him. One of her little girls however did react, stopped, and told her mother they shouldn’t walk there but the mother grabbed her arm and dragged her along.

This was a few years ago and I have since stopped being surprised at the sheer stupidity of people but really, did she really need a someone to tell her you do not walk between a digger and the lorry it is loading?

(A customer calls in, requesting tips for how to get rid of the ants in his garden. I give him several tips but he is very patronizing throughout the call and rather rude.)

Me: “…or, if neither of those things work, come winter, you can try and freeze the ant-hill from within.”

Customer: “How do I do that?”

Me: “You take an iron rod and stick it as far into the ground as possible, and leave it there over winter, and—”

Customer: “So, how far down do I need to stick it?”

Me: “Well, as far as you can, to make sure you get it through their entire colony. One meter is usually recommended.”

Customer: *in a very condescending tone* “Hah, you obviously don’t know what you are talking about! Let me tell you, I live on the WEST COAST. The soil here is no deeper than half a meter at most! There is no possible way I can stick an iron rod a whole meter down into the ground. I would obviously hit the bedrock way before that. So there is no way your stupid suggestion would work to get rid of the ants. I could never penetrate their entire colony.”

Me: “…but, if there is bedrock half a meter down, the ants cannot live further down either.”

Customer: “Oh. I never thought about that. I guess you are right. Do you have any more suggestions?”

(He was very polite and grateful after that!)