Yours portly, much like Michael Douglas, struggles with impatience when sitting in traffic, especially construction traffic when there appears to be no construction work taking place.

The South Carolina Department of Transportation has been resurfacing a portion of the highway that I take to get to work every day for over a month.  That is fine—I like the smooth roadway.  What is not fine is that they have been starting work during morning rush hour.

Indeed, they started the road work the first week that public schools returned to classes—right in front of the elementary school in Lamar!  They continued making similarly boneheaded decisions like that throughout August.  The first day I reported for teacher workdays, they were doing heavy construction at a busy four-way intersection that is the main thoroughfare for people coming and leaving town.

Last week, I sat for thirty minutes waiting for a worker to turn the sign around to “Slow” so we could get through.  I should have been to work five minutes early; instead I was twenty-five minutes late.  I was so frustrated, I began shouting at workers—dozens of whom were sitting on equipment gawking at their phones—to “get off your phones and get to work!”

That wasn’t very Christ-like of me, and I have repented for that, but it put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Fortunately, I did not have class first period that day, so I was okay; it just irked me to no end.

I was so livid, in fact, that I called my State Senator and left a message.  I never have received a call back, but in my message, I begged him to talk to SCDOT to consider starting their work after morning rush hour—at 8:30 AM instead of 7:30 AM.

I also took a short video of the lazy sign worker ogling his cellphone:

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