Idiot Baiting

It was a working day for me and while many people were enjoying the Bank holiday I was at work preparing for another job at a shopping centre which is starting after the holiday.

This shopping centre has a short access road from the main road and its purpose is to accommodate brewery lorries delivering to a pub on the corner and nothing else, but either side it has wide block paved areas for pedestrians to enter the centre which has large anti ram posts to prevent vehicles entering the shopping complex, of which a large part is outside.
In recent weeks a number of idiots have began parking on this road and going into the take away outlets and when they can't get out they simply drive onto the block paving and risk hitting pedestrians, many of whom are elderly or infirm and due to the layout of the centre, there are many disabled customers and many have electric wheelchairs.

Management decided to close this road and install retracting bollards which telescope into themselves at the pavement edge to allow brewery lorries to enter and unload, and replace the inner bollards with several telescopic ones to allow emergency vehicle access to this end which is predominantly outside so ambulances can enter to deal with patients, and fire engines can enter to deal with fires if the need ever arises.

I arrived at around 10.00 this morning as our contractors were bringing the large solid concrete barriers at around 11.00 as our permit didn't begin until 10.30 and they would reverse into this road and lift them over the inner bollards to block them off and then drive forwards and block the sides off and as they drove out and block the outer part of the road end off. These concrete blocks are shaped and weigh 4 tonnes each and lock together with a special cam lock type of mechanism which requires a special tool to lock and unlock them, and as I arrived I noticed this road was filled with parked cars despite huge signs stating it was no parking and the road was not to be blocked. There is somewhat of an irony to this as they have three multi storey car parks which are free for the first hour, and £1.50 for up to four hours which is hardly prohibitive.

I contacted my contact on site and was informed they used interlocking fencing across the outside of the road and idiots were coming with saws and cutting the locking lugs off so they could move them and park on this road; a plan was devised where a lorry could use the emergency access and reverse up to the inner bollards and install its load of 6 blocks as this is the maximum they can carry, and block off the inner end outside the bollards so we had room to remove them, then drive onto the block paving and block the sides off and finally offload from the road to block the outer end off. Ironically we got the prize idiot who thinks they can cut fencing and park illegally and then threaten me and our contractors, crazy Archie was one of our contractors drivers and is crazy by name and nature and this idiot tried punching Archie and he got the mother of a kicking and all in self defence.

The upshot is simple, we were supposed to be starting work in the week and a call to the centre manager rescheduled the works a fortnight later so there are now 11 cars surrounded by over 150 tonnes of concrete blocks and aint going anywhere for the next fortnight, tough titty.