On our first morning in Nice, France. I was awakened by workmen across the street from our hotel. They had started early, but they couldn’t get much done. There was un problème.
They were putting a new tile roof on the building across the street. They used something like an external dumbwaiter to lift heavy roofing materials from the ground up to the roof. But apparently the lift was jammed.
Workers stood around, not knowing what to do. There was a lot of shoulder shrugging and tête scratching. No one was particularly upset. Good time for a smoke and some friendly conversation.
Enter the Hero
Pretty soon a guy showed up who seemed to know what to do. His swagger set him apart from the other workmen. Clearly, HE thought he knew what to do.
He took a look up into the lift shaft and said, “Pas de problème! Leave it to moi!” I didn’t actually hear him, but I’m pretty sure he said something like that.
Scaffolding surrounded the lift, which went all the way up to the roof of the six-story building. The lift repairman climbed up onto the scaffolding, inspecting the lift’s cables as he ascended. Somewhere around the third floor, he found the problem. A cable had come off the track.
Pardon my French?
He yelled down to the workmen. His words must have meant something like, “The &$#@&% cable has come off the track!” And apparently not in a place that would be easy to fix.
Our hero went to work on the cable, but it wasn’t cooperating. After 20 minutes or so, he yelled down for someone to bring him some kind of tool. A workman brought him the tool, et voilà! That did the trick. They tested the lift. It worked!
I thought that at this point, given our hero’s previously noted swagger, there might be a display of manly, look-what-I-just-did theatrics. Nothing. Rien. Maybe because the lift took him longer to fix than expected. Anyway, the hero saved the day and work could proceed.
No more excitement here. Might as well go to breakfast. We did, and we came back, the workmen were hard at it.
They’ve Done This Before
Those roofers had a great system. One guy – the loader – loaded tiles onto the lift, then sent it up to another guy on the roof – the unloader. After unloading the lift, he’d send the platform back down.
Meanwhile, another guy had unloaded tiles from a truck and put them where the loader could do his thing. By the time the lift was back down on the ground, the loader was ready with the next stack of tiles.
Those tiles looked heavy, and there were a lot of ‘em. The sun was beating down on the workmen. No wonder they didn’t seem too upset about the lift not working.
If we’d had an 8-year boy old with us, and the teacher asked him what he did on his summer vacation, his answer would probably be, “We went to France and watched guys moving tiles!”
A bit of harmless early-morning entertainment. Better than watching the morning news, eh? But now it’s time to get moving!
To be continued…
