When you work a difficult job, you know that some tasks aren’t going to be fun, but they need to get done.

What if you got to the job site only to find that another crew of people parked where you need to be working and they refused to leave?

That is what the concrete worker in this story experienced, so he did what he was told and worked around their cars.

Check it out.

You want to use my “truck wash” on your car? I do not feel sorry for what is about to happen here.

Concrete mixers are big, ungainly things.

Trying to maneuver them around a crowded jobsite is like trying to play miniature golf with a tennis ball.

The biggest problem is, of course, other people, specifically other people’s cars.

Nobody is going to lug 50 pounds of tools any further than they have to, so if there is an open space near where they want to be, they park there.

Never mind that it is right next to a sidewalk or directly across from a driveway that a crew is obviously prepping.

It only makes things worse when it’s done by people who should know better (and done intentionally).

So, we’re pumping a grout walls in the late afternoon, which already has me in a bit of a mood.

Grout jobs tend to be very slow.

This sounds awful.

Each cinder block has two cells, and the crew pumps the grout into those cells filling them all the way to the top of the wall.

Grout is really just a term for a weak concrete mix that is pumped super wet.

It has to be that wet to make it all the way to the bottom of the wall, otherwise it sticks to the sides of the cinder blocks (or gets caught up on steel reinforcement).

There is a lot of stopping and starting, as well as a lot of moving the pump.

It all takes time, during which that concrete starts to go off and stiffen up.

Things only get worse on a hot day.

As we move to a new street, we find a line of cars parked all along the side of the street we are working on, just far enough apart to take up as much space as possible without leaving enough room to get the pump in there.

Turns out it is another concrete crew setting up to do patios.

No problem, we’re all concrete guys here, and they know how it is.

Seems like a reasonable request.

We ask them to move.

That I am writing this post tells you what their response was.

It turns out they are waiting for their own pump and mixer to show up, and they intentionally blocked the street because they don’t want us to be in their way.

Their crew chief tells us we can wait for them to finish and move on, or we can just work around them.

It’s pretty obvious he expects us to wait.

Waiting is, of course, going to make the concrete go off even more and will rack up standby charges for the customer.

But trying to work around their cars is going to mean blocking the street and rolling up the hose every time we move (normally the crew just drags/carries it down the sidewalk, but we can’t do that with the cars in the way).

It would take much longer; depending on when their pump shows up, it might not even save us any time.

Still, Todd the pumper rolls his pump right up next to the lead car and feeds his hose out around it.

At the best of times, a concrete pump farts and sputters like a nervous chihuahua, flinging small globs of concrete out the hopper.

I’m sure that would totally be accidental.

If the driver isn’t paying attention and accidentally lets the concrete level get too low, the pump sucks in air.

Feeding a concrete pump air is like feeding a hippopotamus Olestra; it’s not pretty, and it gets everywhere.

We probably end up moving that pump twice as many times as we have to, but it ensures that every single one of those cars gets to spend some quality time next to the hopper.

We finish are done with the job and are washing out the pump when the crew chief (whose own concrete and pump still haven’t shown up yet) storms over to complain about all the concrete splatter on their cars.

I point out that we told them we’d be pumping there and asked them to move, but they refused.

At this point he sees that I have a truck wash bucket strapped to my water tank and demands I let him use it to clean off his car.

I tell him that is a terrible idea, smoking lounge on the Hindenburg levels of terrible.

The stuff we use is designed to dissolve dried concrete, and it will probably damage his car.

The concrete is fresh enough that he can probably just rinse it off with water.

He isn’t having it.

He tells me to stop lying; if it doesn’t damage my truck, it won’t hurt his car.

I’m not so sure he does know what he is doing.

Besides, he’s done this before and knows what he is doing.

Now, keeping a concrete mixer clean is a downright Sisyphean task.

No matter how hard you try, chutes overflow, pumps splatter, and plants huff cement powder all over your truck.

There are a variety of chemicals used to clean off concrete, and most of the modern mixes are relatively safe (for something that can dissolve concrete).

Our plants provide a phosphoric acid mix (relatively safe isn’t the same as actually safe) to any drivers that need it, so it quite common for there to be a bucket of it stashed somewhere on the truck.

Of course, part of what makes these chemicals safer also makes them somewhat less effective.

That’s why some of us will bring in our own cleaning products to fortify the company mix.

I wouldn’t want that anywhere near my car.

These are not the friendly chemicals that will just leave you with a mild chemical burn; my bucket of fun dips down to the good old days of leaded gasoline, asbestos and red dye no. 2.

Still, I warned him, and he assured me he knew what he was doing.

Besides, he’s intentionally being a jerk and expected my sub to pay standby for his convenience. I let him have the bucket.

I half expect him to stop when he pulls the lid off.

The witch’s brew in the bucket smells like Walter White’s bathtub.

Somehow, the fact that his nose hairs are curling up like a spider in a flame doesn’t seem to faze him.

Brush goes in the bucket.

Brush comes out of the bucket.

Brush slams onto the hood of the car with a wet slap.

I can only watch in mute horror as the man proceeds to not just clear off the concrete, but bathe his entire hood in hydrochloric acid, rubbing it in to get out all those nasty water spots.

It’s like watching an orphan unwittingly skin his favorite puppy.

This isn’t going to be pretty.

None of us stick around long enough to see the final result, but it is already apparent that he has scrubbed off the clear coat and is in the process of etching brush marks in the paint.

I don’t want to be anywhere near him when that hood dries out. I let him keep the bucket.

Hey, he said he knew what he was doing, so it is on him.

Take a look at what the people in the comments had to say.

Apparently the guy had no idea.

This is a good question.

This commenter hates parking issues like this.

This person thinks the story was well written.

Yes, never make them mad!

Hey, he was warned.

He had to have been horrified though.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.