Alright, let me take you back a bit. We were young, dumb, and working a summer job on a pretty big construction site. Lots of downtime, you know? And boredom breeds… well, let’s call it creativity.
The Setup
So, there was this one porta john, kind of isolated near the back fence line. Perfect target. The idea wasn’t anything super mean, just annoying. We decided we’d wait for Gary – nice guy, but always took forever in there – and just barricade the door.
Here’s what we gathered:
- A couple of spare cinder blocks we found lying around.
- A long piece of 2×4 lumber.
- Lookouts – that was me and Kevin.
The Execution (or Attempt)
We waited. Seemed like ages. Finally, Gary heads over to the blue box. Perfect. Once the door clicked shut, Mike and Steve grabbed the stuff. They jammed the 2×4 diagonally against the door handle and wedged the other end against the ground. Then they piled the cinder blocks against the wood for good measure. We figured it’d hold him for a good few minutes, enough for a laugh.
We scurried back behind a stack of drywall, trying not to bust out laughing. We could hear Gary shuffling around in there after a minute or two. Then came the push on the door. Nothing. Another push, harder this time. Still nothing.
We started hearing some muffled shouting. “Hey! What the…? Let me out!”
The Backfire
Okay, here’s where it got less funny for us. We were giggling like idiots when the site foreman, Mr. Henderson, came around the corner. Big dude, no-nonsense type. He heard the shouting too.
He walked right over, saw the setup, saw us trying to look invisible, and just gave us THAT look. You know the one. Pure disappointment and annoyance.
He didn’t even yell. Just pointed at the barricade. “Get. It. Down. Now.”
We scrambled over there, tripping over ourselves to get the blocks and the wood out of the way. Gary burst out, looking pretty ticked off, understandably. Mr. Henderson just stared at us.
The result?
- We had to apologize to Gary (super awkward).
- We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the messiest parts of the site as punishment.
- No more ‘creative’ ideas from us for the rest of that summer.
Looking back, it was a dumb kid thing to do. Gave us a story, I guess, but definitely not my proudest moment. Learned a lesson about respecting people’s space, even if it’s just a porta john on a dusty site.
