A white, freshly painted street line going directly over a sizable pile of leaves might look like an accident — or the epitome of laziness. But the local street crew in Memphis, Tenn., that painted the line said they knew what they were doing and painted over the leaves, instead of just brushing them aside, on purpose.
“Once this large convoy gets rolling, it’s really safer and more efficient for it to just keep rolling. We don’t want to, particularly on a busy street, to stop the convoy,” Memphis City Engineer John Cameron told WMCTV-TV of the three-vehicle crew’s operations.
“We have over 750 miles of street that we stripe. We try to do that over a three year cycle,” Cameron said. “It was done per our policy.”
A smaller street crew eventually came back to move the debris and fill in the stripe of paint. (Image source: WMCTV-TV)
While it might seem amusing in photos, some residents were not laughing about the six- to seven-foot gaff on Crumpler Road:
Comments on Facebook included “I pay taxes and this is an absolute misuse of taxpayer dollars” and “I know there are some good workers, but as a whole it is pitiful the apathy and lazy attitudes in the Memphis city organizations.
