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Pumpy Asked Whether He Helps With The Clean Up Or Just Watches, Trade Confirms Supervising From The Cab Counts As Hard Labour
THE WASH-OUT — "Do you help clean up or just watch em work?" Asking for a mate, obviously, and every pumper in the country has gone very quiet and found something urgent to do on the radio.
The pour is done, the hopper is a crime scene, and the concrete is still hanging off the formwork and scaffold like it's refusing to leave. Somewhere in the middle of it stands a bloke with a hose and a thousand-yard stare, while the pumpy leans on the cab and offers moral support from a safe distance.
The trade has split down the middle. One camp swears blind they jump in, because a clean machine is a machine that starts tomorrow. The other camp has a very well rehearsed answer: "Yep, go for water." Then the hose gets left in the wall and the ute is already rolling out the gate.
A linehand with eleven years of other people's slurry under his nails says there is a simple test. If you can't remember who cleaned the pipes last Thursday, it wasn't you.
The honest middle ground belongs to the operator who grabs one broom, stands next to the biggest mess and looks busy until the truck leaves. Respect to @i.a.pumping for getting the question started. The real answer is in the pub, and it was never about the hose.
Satire, obviously.PumpLife is a satirical publication about the concrete pumping and concrete industry. The stories here are made up for a laugh and are not statements of fact. Any resemblance to a real operator, concreter, pump or smoko is a coincidence.
