HOW MANY MEN DOES IT TAKE TO FILL IN A HOLE?

Last evening - it was after 5PM - 3 trucks arrived and parked at the bottom of my drive. They were marked 'DRAINAGE' on the sides and were contractors for the council.

One of three trucks at the bottom of the drive

I was worried that there had been a water leak although I hadn't seen any evidence of this so I filled the filtered water jug we keep in the fridge and the electric jug just in case.

The trucks disgorged eight men in hi-vis jackets who, because it started to rain put on hi-vis rain coats and began to unload picks, shovels and all sorts of equipment. They conferred for a while before one of them started up a pneumatic drill and began to dig up the 4 square metre patch of roadway that's been there for over a year. Three others stood about leaning on shovels and the rest scuttled back into the trucks and watched through the windows.

I wrote a post about the water leak that lead to the council contractors digging up the road and filling the hole in again in September last year See: SPRINGTIME
The repair job that they did to the road was a bit rough and I expected them to come back sometime to improve it. They did come back -  13 MONTHS LATER!

As I said, there were three large trucks with eight men in them. One of the trucks had a big bin containing hot tar mix. Once the hole had been dug (I don't know what they did with the material dug out) three men got out of the truck and started filling the hole with the hot tar mix. They smoothed it off and thumped it down using another machine that they got off a different truck. After one and a half hours it was job done. No water was turned off. There was no disruption.

I thought about the inefficiency of this. Eight men doing this job to dig up and fill in a 4 square metre patch of non-urgent roadwork. They started the job after 5PM so no doubt were on some kind of overtime.
This all comes out of our rates. If given the opportunity I'd have asked them to pay me to dig the hole and, once one person in a truck had dropped off a little bit of hot tar mix I'd have filled it in again. Even if I charged a  usurious rate the savings would be considerable.