Just because someone has the job title for an occupation doesn’t always mean they know what they’re doing. One Pennsylvania woman experienced this predicament when several construction men outside her home loudly bashed the sidewalk for around an hour. “My whole house was booming, I thought someone was trying to break in or something worse 😅,” she remarked, posting a clip of what was going on to r/mildlyinfuriating. Outside her window, an excavator was being used to hit the sidewalk, over and over, without any sort of progress being made.
Eventually, the workers whipped out a jackhammer, which made quick work of the sidewalk they were attempting to excavate, to no avail. Still, the racket that they made during their initial attempt really bothered the neighborhood, and one woman who had enough posted her complaints to Reddit, claiming they were using “improper equipment” for the job. The fact that they continued their loud banging for so long was also rather infuriating, considering the workers could have just used the jackhammer from the get-go.
“Maybe if they hit it a few more times….” joked a commenter, as if everyone’s ears weren’t ringing enough. Another person remarked how it’s a “great way to break very expensive equipment,” referring to the excavator. Fortunately, most construction vehicles are built to be durable to take quite a beating, but not at the expense of a neighborhood’s sanity. Some Redditor believed that since the construction workers might be paid by the hour, they were in no rush to get the job and perhaps even intentionally stalling.
However, one person chimed in, claiming that the excavator was actually not “improper equipment” at all, but it was the workers who were improperly utilizing it to clear the sidewalk. “Typically they should grab an edge of the sidewalk and lift and it’ll break. Once the first piece is out then it goes fast from there,” the user explains. Even so, it’s still much faster and more efficient to use the jackhammer, but it does go to show that knowledge of operating a machine versus the expertise to use it properly is quite different.
In the end, it would appear they got the job done. But as one person remarks, “Something tells me that they are not professionals.”
