#962 Being the guy on the construction crew who gets to hold the Stop sign

Neil Pasricha

Sometimes you drive by those construction workers and you just can’t believe what they’re going through.

Everyone’s face is covered in hot soot, sewer grease, and rain. One guy is up to his neck in the road, another is jackhammering his spinal column into dust, and then there’s the guy driving the big roller, smearing steaming asphalt around like butter. And littering all these folks are the guys cranking pickaxes into the ground and the ones trying to steer big, clunky bulldozers down the narrow gravel shoulder beside the ditch. Of course, everyone on the team’s losing brain cells by the minute from the fumes which smell like a jammed laser printer had sex with a gas station.

If you happen to be working on a team of construction workers, then I think you’re pretty lucky if they hand you the job of being the guy who gets to hold the Stop sign. You must be either the grizzled veteran who earned each day of the Stop sign job with each slipped disc over the years, or you’re the skinny, babyfaced newbie who nobody trusts within a quarter mile of the job site.

Either way, if you can handle the guilt then your job’s, well…

AWESOME!

Best job ever

15 thoughts to “#962 Being the guy on the construction crew who gets to hold the Stop sign”

  2. “One guy is up to his neck in the road, another is jackhammering his spinal column into dust, and then there’s the guy driving the big roller, smearing steaming asphalt around like butter.” THAT is an awesome line…so fun to read! I hope we’re going to see more writing from you in future, Neil…say, a memoir maybe, or a novel.

    Those road folks are mainly out in summer, so they’re stuck standing in the blistering sun holding that sign. Yikes, looks dreadful to me! Thank goodness someone’s willing to do it. They get BIG respect from me!

  3. I’ve been seeing a lot of road work lately, no to mention when a big storm hit and knocked out power for days and the power company was out and about. I always wave to the guy/gal holding the sign. I kinda feel bad for them, having to stand there on the hot and hard road all day, flipping the sign from ‘stop’ to ‘slow.’ I was once going to apply for a job doing just this, but after a lot of thought, I figured I couldn’t cut it.

  4. It’s actually kind of dangerous to be that guy. My dad’s in construction, and he said that the stop sign guys get hit by cars way more often than you’d think. But maybe that means the stop sign guys are really badass.

  5. LOL, my husband is an asphalt guy and it’s almost always the baby-faced newbie holding the Stop Sign. Nobody wants that job, not even the slipped-disc guy!

  6. I never thought about it like that. I always felt bad for them because I thought the job would be incredibly boring. But now that you put it that way, it actually seems that it is a decent and relaxing job. A nice break from the chaos of construction.

  7. Yeah, I can’t agree here. You do make a great case, Neil, but while it might be a nice break to hold the sign for an hour or two, I think it would be terrible to have to do it all day every day. Boring, hot, and dangerous! I’d rather be doing something more substantial to pass the time :)

    1. I think if I were to be the person who held the sign, I would have to make up some kind of game to keep from getting too bored. Wave at the cars to see how many waved back or spontaniously break out in dance.

      1. Well, that would be fantastic. And surely, drivers would obey the “SLOW” command if they wished to see the strange lady dancing with the sign.

  8. I worked in road construction for 5 years and honestly holding the stop sign was the WORST job I ever did. You have to stand there all day long and only get to talk to the other guy on the Walkie Talkie so you can direct traffic. I would rather have ran the jack-hammer, dug, cleaned up. Anything but hold that stupid stop sign all day!

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