So many sub-contractors!

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I still can’t get my head around the way things work here. So many jobs that I would have considered one task are subdivided and contracted out. I posted recently about my experience with promotional events for a charity https://www.mylot.com/post/3541143/now-i-doubt-everything I was surprised to find that the charity hired an advertising agency, and the agency hired events staff and a photographer. Now I just observed a similar chain of contractors working at the roadside. What I would have thought would be one job (digging a hole to install new cables) turned out to be at least three! First some men in a van came and put up some temporary fencing and a sign saying it was on behalf of the telephone company. Then the telephone company men came, dug the hole and did the necessary work (I didn’t actually see them, so for all I know there could have been two teams, one to dig the hole and the others to fit the cables). Then some more men came in a van, spread a bit of extra soil around and scattered a handful of grass seed. I really find it hard to believe that it is more cost-effective to hire a sub-contractor to send a couple of workers to the site to scatter some grass seed, than just to give the telephone workers a bag of seed and get them to spread a bit around when they have finished! It’s not as if they were doing a major landscaping job! And of course there’s all the extra unnecessary driving involved, no wonder there’s so much traffic congestion and pollution. Here I am doing my best to avoid using the car as much as possible and meanwhile dozens of teams of workmen are driving all over the place all the time for no good reason! Has it always been this way? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2023.