It's never happened to me, but a few coworkers working in small towns have had the local conspiracy theorist dismantle their external RTK radio setup and toss their receivers in the bushes to keep us from controlling their thoughts.
Don't think they ever damaged equipment beyond a whip antenna that got snapped. Local law enforcement always asked if we wanted to press charges, and we always said that those folks needed more help than a citation could give them...
I've had a local property owner (Karen) call the police on me and my crew for "attempting to sneak into people's houses".?ÿ ?ÿWhen the police got there I had to explain we were working on an as-built for an RCB and several connecting junction boxes.?ÿ I guess popping lids with a tape and a flashlight looked like we were up to something nefarious.
The lady had been out there earlier and asked what were doing.?ÿ When I explained what we were up to she simply told me, "I don't believe you.?ÿ I'm calling the police".?ÿ?ÿ
some folks...
Should have told her you were playing hide and seek with the Ninja Turtles
Shoulda told her "somebody in one of these houses took a dump, that was so big, and solid, that it's plugged up our lines. We are looking for it. Do you know anybody in this area who might have done this?"
Then, just stare at her.
N
I don't think that's the best way to handle the situation.?ÿ Just my opinion, and I wouldn't be happy to find out that someone in our company did it, and then posted it to YT.?ÿ I hope that Josh works for himself
@jph, you know it's NOT a good idea. But, some of the crew need a bath, haircut, and some clean clothes too!
Nate
I don't think that's the best way to handle the situation.?ÿ Just my opinion, and I wouldn't be happy to find out that someone in our company did it, and then posted it to YT.?ÿ I hope that Josh works for himself
I wasn't going to watch the video until I read JPH's comment. I only got 1/2 way through it and decided I would fire that guy for exacerbating whatever negative interaction had gone on before the video started. The field crew are the very public face of the company. Part of the job is to smooth the way with the neighbors, and refer potential clients to the office. That guy is a walking public relations disaster.
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That guy is a walking public relations disaster.
Especially if "Karens" husband is the producer of the local "Eyewitness News 13". ?????ÿ
I've had a couple of pseudo 'Karen' instance in my career.?ÿ I was setting photo control for a project around 9/11.?ÿ When I came back to due the second pass a month or so later, I had an irate adjacent land-owner yell at me for painting a target on the county road.?ÿ ?ÿSeems he was worried that this was an Al-Qaeda plot to bomb their single wide and used warsh machine collection.?ÿ This is after he had called the local sheriff and was informed that it was all okay.
The second was the case of missing photo control panels.?ÿ The panels were set for a county wide project (the county is twice the size of Rhode Island).?ÿ In one area, all of the panels appeared crumpled up in the imagery.?ÿ After talking to one of the local ranchers, it turns out that some of his neighbors did not like them.?ÿ This was back int 2015 when the special forces were doing some training across the US and the nut-job conspiracists were sure it was part of plan to take their guns.?ÿ Apparently these idiots thought the SF needed these 15' crosses to locate their targets.?ÿ No biggy on my part, I just got paid more to post ID and they paid more in taxes or got less services for it.
Same here.?ÿ Was setting photo control up in the NEK (Northeast Kingdom), and those hicks destroyed my targets, stole my cones, and tossed firecrackers out the window at me while I was setting one.?ÿ Had one woman stop in the middle of the road, and got out of car to yell at me for being in the road
I agree with JPH on this one.?ÿ Surveyor could had easily and simply deescalated that situation much better than that.?ÿ Whenever we receive complaints pertaining to right-of-entry, it very commonly (not always) reveals the field crew (or land surveyor) handling it in a very poor manner, which hurts the entirety of the profession.
Depending on the situation what the look on the faces of the person that approaches me whenever they go "what are you doing?"?ÿ if they're contentious and mean I go "I'm?ÿ doing my job what are you doing oh wait you're bothering me please let me do my job."
I was sent out to recon a job we were doing for the National Weather Service, they were planning to build what is now the weather station that covers the Philadelphia region.?ÿ It was Friday afternoon and an extremely hot and humid summer day.?ÿ I started reconning along the county road frontage and setting lath at found corners.?ÿ Out comes Karen, the adjacent lot owner, yelling and screaming at me to remove the lath from her property.
As I stood there boiling from the heat and humidity, she wouldn't let me get word in edgewise, so I pulled the lath from her property side of the monuments and set them in the R. O. W. and said, there, they are in the roadway now, not on your property.?ÿ Still in a tirade she marches back inside her house.
10 minutes later, the cops pull up behind me because they got a call about trespassing and vandalism.?ÿ When I explained to them what was going on, they just started laughing and told me that this particular lady would call the PD for such stupid things as the wind blowing in the wrong direction.
When I got back to the office, our lead surveyor was waiting on me after having had to take a call from psycho lady and listening to her rant.?ÿ All he could do was look at me and shake his head, even he was lost for words.?ÿ ?ÿ?ÿ
Yeah, I'll be patient for a while, but if they won't leave me alone I'm going to politely tell them to get lost and to call the police if they really have a problem with what I'm doing. It's possible to be professional and still tell someone off.
It's amazing how many people are OK with getting up in someone else's business. Or destroying something that's not theirs; I've had photo panels ruined by idiots too.
I pulled the lath from her property side of the monuments and set them in the R. O. W. and said, there, they are in the roadway now, not on your property.?ÿ Still in a tirade she marches back inside her house
Early on in my career I did a lot of residential lot surveys. We were always careful to dig out plugs of lawn when tagging prop corners, so that we could replace it and make the lawn look almost exactly the same.
One morning, as we removed a perfect round plug to find the cap at the center of the hole, a homeowner came out in his bathrobe with a coffee mug yelling that we were digging up his lawn and to "give me my lawn back". Got right in the crew chief's face and wouldn't let him get a word in. I quickly observed the cap and stepped back.
The chief doesn't break eye contact with the guy, but motions to me to give him the plug and the sharpshooter shovel. He holds up the plug until the homeowner pauses for breath, then sets it on the ground, neatly cuts it into three pieces - a half and two quarters - and points to each piece in turn, saying "Public's, your neighbor's, yours!"
And as he said yours, he dropped the last quarter into the guy's other hand, spun on his heel and walked off leaving the guy standing in his bathrobe, sputtering and holding a corner of his lawn and the coffee mug.
I deal with this stuff all the time and I don't think it could have possibly been handled in a worse way. The easiest way to let all the air out of someone like that is just reply to everything they say, 'Yes Mam, No Mam or Sir' and genuinely smile, never smirk, get smart or be disrespectful. Agree with them, tell them you feel their pain and you hear what they're saying. They want a confrontation, don't take the bait. It takes a lot of energy for someone to stay angry without anyone provoking them and they typically run out of steam in short order. Getting defensive you might also lose out on valuable intel. Feed the troll at your own peril.
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
@rover83 that's a good one!
On another recon job for a different company, and again, on a Friday afternoon, we were sent out to recon a large K Mart shopping center with a side street that dead ended at our property line.?ÿ At the end of the day, we were probing around looking for monuments that had an invisible dog fence and chopped through it in two places.?ÿ The owner spent the whole weekend finding where we chopped through the wire and fixing both locations.
Monday morning we went back out to start the survey and cut the wire again but this time, our truck was parked at the dead end and the owner wrote down the phone number on the truck.?ÿ When he discovered we cut the wire again, he went ballistic and was on the phone with one of the company owners when we returned to the office.?ÿ The company owner managed to talk the guy down, offered to pay the guy for the time he spent on the repairs, started asking questions and ended up buying an invisible fence system from the property owner to install at this own home where I hung out with his two sons who were Party Chiefs that I worked under.
The company owner's dog was dumb as a box of rocks and we would sit in the front yard having cold beers and watching the stupid dog shock himself crossing the buried fence and then turning around to cross it again, getting shocked again.?ÿ In the end, between paying the property owner for his time and buying the invisible fence for his own yard the company owner was out about a grand, good money back in the early 80's, and he ended up unplugging the invisible fence he bought because his dog was too stupid to learn not to cross it after a few months of getting shocked.?ÿ ?ÿ?ÿ
Worst I ever got yelled at while checking bench marks was at a newish rural residence. The BM had been set at the fence line back when there was a field and fence there, but now the resident had manicured lawn all the way to the edge of the gravel.
I found the disk without any digging and took a picture. In the shade in late afternoon the camera flash went off, which is probably what alerted the guy. Before I could get a tie measurement to the culvert he was out there red-faced and yelling.
I just told him I'd leave now, did so with weak knees and knotted stomach, and was happy that he didn't get physical as I expected.
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Another time that had me really worried, there was no yelling.?ÿ I stopped on a gravel road where a railroad had long ago been torn out, to see if the bench mark happened to survive.
As I walked up and down the roadside ditch I saw a guy on a tractor headed around the field my way. When he got close I walked over to explain what I was looking for and ask if he had ever seen the concrete post.
Before I got to talk, he started quietly but very sternly asking who I was and what i was doing there
?ÿI gave him my name and tried to explain. About that time a truck pulled up from the other field and a huge guy got out to stand behind me. The disjointed conversation went on for a while with me saying i didn't think i was doing any harm looking in the ROW and the guy apparently not believing a word I was saying about the RR and a post.
Eventually I learned he was the one who caught someone stealing seed for parent-line corn that he grew for the hybrid seed company (the culprit intended to send it to China) in a case that had been in all the papers. He thought I was doing the same.
I assured him I had no use for seed corn, which he still accused me of, but I managed to walk away with no harm.
A lack of maturity in my opinion. ?ÿI??d give him the attention he was after by posting that video.?ÿ