DIG THEY MUST

-->

It was June 5, and along with my neighbor Richie across the street from me, I was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike on our way to Philadelphia. Now WHO goes to Philadelphia, I’ve heard of people leaving Philadelphia, but never going there.

As we drove through scenic Jersey, home of ‘Snookie’ and ‘the Situation’, and all things loud and in poor taste, Richie, an astute and observant neighbor if there ever was one noticed the inordinate amount of construction on the turnpike. It seems that mile after mile, the place was being dug up, with mile after mile of orange cones that slowed you down from merging and further slowed you down from wonder why NO activity was going on!

It took me back to my days as art supervisor for a large mail order company and some of the people that worked under me. In between telling people that they may have already won but probably not, my charges had time on their hands and would go and visit other designers or writers.  As I was walking from a meeting back to my office would see one of my charges strolling the halls and I suggested to them that if they were going to stroll, to look like they had a place they were heading to. This could be done by carrying a ruler in hand, and if they had a pad too, better yet.

Well it all got me thinking, why doesn’t the State of New Jersey do something like that, instead of getting drivers angry at them for seeing an empty lane cordoned off causing merging and traffic delays? They could have a guy in a hardhat stroll up and down the empty lane, with a pad and ruler in his hand. A driver sees that and think: Oh! They are working in that lane. If he carried a pencil, with the ruler and pad while wearing a hard hat, they think he’s the supervisor, and don’t even want to be in that lane, saying, “Boy, I’m sure glad I don’t have HIS job!”

Sometimes you just gotta dink!