The Road-Builders and Stand-Stillers

What I don’t understand about the Department Of Transportation is why they are continually fulfilling the stereotype for their workers everyday. Now listen carefully. I DO NOT blame the workers for doing what they are told to do. If their job is to stand around all day and make $9 dollars an hour, then that is their job and I’m glad they have it. I am suspicious of the DOT, however, for hiring 3 times as many workers as they need. That is not even an exaggeration.
I don’t know if they have heard or not, but the stereotype for construction workers is, “All they do is stand around all day long.” Now most stereotypes have some validity and some exaggeration, but this one is just plain true. Now is it really necessary to hire people to just stand around?
I’m wondering why they do this, because there must be a reason. I know construction work is very dangerous, but do that many people actually get hurt that you need, that many extra people. The reason it is dangerous in the first place is because they have too many people standing out in the middle of the road.
Now I could also understand if they said, this is hard manual labor and we do short shifts to be more efficient. Like, 20 min on, 10 min off and have a couple rotations going, but the thing is, no one does manual labor anymore. The only people I see “working” out there are the people in trucks and tractors (most of them with air conditioning).
My suggestion is to make a couple machines that hold signs. When one sign says “SLOW”, the other one automatically says “STOP”. Wait, that’s called a stoplight! There is absolutely no need for people to be out there wasting their lives rotating signs, with the technology we have today. Let’s continue to pay the people who would normally hold the signs, and just send them down to the local soup kitchen or YMCA. It would be much more productive.
And it would make me feel much better about paying taxes that go to paying the DOT for all this “work”.