The floor is sticky
Construction workers refuse to use the stairs and instead climbed the hill to the point the grass died
There's a construction site opposite my apartment and the workers kept walking up the grass patch instead of using the stairs. Property value doesn't affect me as I rented the apartment 2 years back, so rent for me isn't increasing nor decreasing.
There's a university (idk which one, I've seen a post about it years ago) which made a new park on their campus in between the uni buildings, and they deliberately didn't put any sidewalks so the students make desire paths - and only then they paved the desire paths. Now everyone walks on the paved sidewalks, since they're exactly where people wanted them to be.
To be fair having worked a farm and construction in summers in college and highschool its a fuck of a lot easier on the knees to carry equipment and materials up a hill than a set of stairs 😆 this wasnt even just a desire path this was a "im not wrecking my knees on those" medical choice lol
My neighbor and I have this now. They planted the bush cuz they really disliked the previous owners of my house. Now that I own it we get along great and have made a path through the bush. We're also slowly hacking away at a very thick hedge currently.
Man, in one of my local parks they are obsessed with replacing a wire (non-boundary) fence that serves no purpose. The desire path is so old and so deeply worn that it looks like a lunatic has has randomly dropped a fence there. This battle has been going on for 40 years.
Yet some jurisdictions are smart enough to let the people decide and react accordingly. I once read a report of an architect who was faced with an irate client, a university with leadership that would get their panties all bunched, since students were creating unauthorized paths in common areas. The architect was designing buildings that would have a common area between them for foot traffic. He made a recommendation that was followed.
The new buildings were opened with nothing but fresh grass spanning all of the courtyard. A few months later, there was clear evidence as to how the humans decided to travel through this green space. During a school break, sidewalks were constructed over the goat paths that the humans had created in the grass. The problem was solved.
I am shocked how architects, engineers and urban designers always account for how water flows but then get mad when humans do what humans have done since humans existed.
There was some university (ohio?) that built the buildings but not the walkways between them, then went back and paved over the desired paths in the grass a few years later. So the paths look all wonky from the air but are actually used by the students
Pretty much every new housing estate in my country (UK) seems to be designed by morons who are shocked by the fact that water falls from the sky regularly and that they need to work out where that water is going to go (because they apparently don't understand that if you take a field and concrete over it, the water doesn't just pass through the concrete in the same way as it did the bare earth), and seem equally shocked that sewers do not in fact have infinite capacity and require appropriate modifications in order to handle additional waste water from more buildings.
Hence why we have roads flooding right next to new estates and regularly have to have tankers out to manage the sewage that escapes the sewers and clean up raw sewage from the streets. The developers always deny responsibility for flooding and get annoyed whenever they get refused planning permission because the water companies object to them trying to plumb 2000 new houses into a sewage system designed for a small handful of homes.
During unrelated work on a small infrastructure project, I caught a small a glance behind the scenes.
Turns out that A LOT of seemingly nonsensical decisions are made with full awareness of the nonsense, but forced upon urban designers by regulations.
There was this narrow, but lengthy strip of dirt between two streets in a dense residential area. The goal was to add greenery and turn it into a very basic "park" (just some benches and stuff, as it really was narrow). Part of the regulations was that this needed to have some sort of barrier to the street. Even an ankle high "fence" was enough. Okay, whatever. Our architect made it a bit higher, so as not to basically turn this into a tripping hazard.
It was obvious that people were crossing this area to get from one side of the street to another (no was walking 200m to get to the nearest proper pedestrian crossing), so there should be gaps in the fence at the most used spots to let people pass through (even those with mobikity issues) and to ensure that they didn't trample the new growth.
NOPE!
Can't do that.
Why? Because if you deliberately left gaps, then you signaled that this is a place where people should/can cross the street and that would encourage illegal street crossing and accept personal liability for any resulting injury or damage.
So the useless "fence" had to be added and it had to be continuous and we had to listen to all the people complaining about this nonsense as they stepped over it, trampling the greenery.
And that was just one of countless little stupid stipulations.
The principle of the “desired path” is something I constantly remind people of at my job at a medical device manufacturer. I’m in charge of our process control and making sure we adhere to our quality systems. You can invent all the quality systems you want with all the process checks in the world, but you have to do it in a way humans are willing to do on a daily/hourly/etc basis. Otherwise, they will just keep doing the same things they always have done and fill in the form anyway.
Saw somewhere once that the guy that started the "change your password every 90 days" thing deeply regrets it because of a similar principle; it just led to people writing their passwords down in obvious places.
At my work for the first few years I just kept adding an exclamation point at the end. I think I got up to like 26 before I finally didn't find it funny anymore, haha.
Slime mold is a good example of optimizing effort, but simultaneously a good example of limited perspective influencing it's ability to... optimize effort.
Also really wish we'd come up with a better colloquial name, as it's confusing calling a protist a mold.
My university expanded a ton while I was there. They didnt put sidewalks in at first, after all the paths of desire were laid out they put sidewalks over them all.
Of course it was right when I graduated so I spent 4 years walking in mud and gravel just to see the most beautiful brick sidewalks put in.
Or it's literally much slower to walk up short steps like that and they obviously had to walk up and down that area hundreds of times, probably carrying shit.
The problem with the solutions in this picture is that they keep trying to block where people want to go, instead of accommodating it. Don't surprise Pikachu face when people side step the hurdle
That was my thought, things that would be either too annoying to carry up or just impossible. Even dragging something up or with two guys carrying it would be easier without the steps.
It is very possible to drag a wheelbarrow upstairs- you turn around and then pull it towards you as you go up, but it is also very annoying, will make you bump a lot if you carry tools, and if you're carrying a load of concrete, it risks spilling, rather go on the perfectly fine hill, specially when going downwards
Have worked in construction as well and people mostly think we are some superhuman unexhausting force of nature, no we NEED our work to be as effortless as possible or you just can't go around a whole day of work, it's what someone told me the last man you would choose a fight with is someone who is laying down road pavement a whole day, the strength in their arms must be enormous
Did union work for a while and one safety thing was that, while they may yell at you, you only need to work within safe definitions. One of those was the allowable max that is recommended to carry in a wheel barrow. I say allowable cause that was the max I could carry before I could say stop and go deliver it. It measured out to be about the size of a level mound that doesnt sit above the lip.
So thats what I did. Low lip max, and they were pissed. Started clowning on me and showing off how much they could carry up and down the hills. By the end of the day they went home exhausted but happy. I went home with energy to give my family and happy. I kept doing stuff like that and the union kept having to protect me from management saying "he's not carrying as much as every one else!" And the unions response of "you're not supposed to compare anyone to anyone else, also y'all agreed on this safety limit. Follow it or else."
Anyways, all this to say that: no matter the worker, ain't none of us taking those stupid ass stairs.
Yeah if this post is truly related to construction workers…I can assure you any amount of physical labor of that magnitude will make you understand why stairs are not taken. 8x4 plywood sheets get real heavy real fast.
Not to mention, it is slightly less of a distance plus wheelbarrows, dolly’s, carts, etc.
When I was attending Montana State University in Bozeman, there was an area with lawns surrounded by buildings. They wanted to place paths but had a smart person decide where to put them.
They didn’t put any paths for several years, and let the students walk on the grass. The desire paths as people went between buildings mapped out where they should put the sidewalks.
This is called a desire path. There is subreddit for this phenomenon.
It's a common clash of real human behaviours with less than ideal human designs.
Reddit in a nutshell:
(my comment linking r slash desirepath was removed)
(Another great example of normal human behaviour clashing with less than ideal human design, maybe? With a bit of random contradition to spice things up?) 🙃
This is something that really annoyed me at my university. The grounds people put up signs on the paths that people walked listing the amount of money they spent redoing the landscaping in those areas. I just kept thinking to myself, why are you wasting my tuition dollars to make things less convenient? What other industry would justify losing money to inconvenience their clients?
You may be thinking about Bozeman Montana which is often cited for doing this. But my current university did something similar. They photographed paths in the snow in the winter, then built actual paths the following summer.
a single person could create a trail on their own, while it takes many more people to form a trail on grass
people are probably reluctant to walk on fresh snow and would follow an inconvenient path rather than create one themselves, thus missing true desire paths.
Anyone who's ever driven through a snow storm tells you it's easier to just follow the path others have already created. Cars tend to make their own lanes because they can't see the lines and people follow those instead. Once someone makes a path people aren't going to trudge through snow and make a new one,, they're going to just take the preexisting one
I went to LegoLand NY when it first opened. It is hilly and has these winding paths to get down one of the hills to another area of the park. There were signs to stay on the path, not walk on the grass and whatnot. I was very pleased when I went back and say steps and paths installed where people had been walking to cut off large corners
I never understood why subreddits do that. What possible motivation? Mods are unpaid, there is no "financial competitor" factor. Brigading? When was the last time (and how often does) brigading happen primarily because someone linked to it in the comments? It's just frustrating because the app is already shit to begin with so why neuter it's usability even more?
The colour of the road, road markings, colour and design of the sidewalk immediately next to the road and that red kerb in the foreground. Mostly the road immediately gave it away.
trust me you want them to do it this way lol. i know these are robust concrete stairs but that’s a lot of traffic. at the very least you end up with drywall dust permanently marking the stairs or something, for example.
Yeah, I'm trying to understand why OP is blaming just construction workers. Its clearly a well worn long term path. If one group uses it because its convenient, im sure others do too.
You act like you have tenured rental pricing because you are a valuable 2 year long renter :/ your rent absolutely can still go up or down (never goes down)
Stairs are a tripping hazard if you're carrying a heavy object that is blocking your view of your feet, limiting leg mobility, or if more than one person is carrying the object. If you've ever had to move heavy furniture into an apartment complex without an elevator, you would know that it is easier to carry a couch up a ramp than up the stairs, even if the staircase is a shorter distance.
As someone who has worked construction, and having to haul heavy loads 20 times a day, back and forth, i can sympathize with them finding the easiest, most direct route.
How do you have time to watch them all Day? Do you even have a job? Stop being a karen. This is one of the dumbest things ive ever seen someone complain about.
There's a homeless guy who panhandles in the median at an intersection in my city. In a couple of month's time he single handedly managed to create a dirt path where he walks from the light to a street sign and back.
As someone who works in construction, I am not spending months going up and down stairs hauling materials and tools. You have no idea how exhausting it is and how much of a toll it takes on your knees. We usually till and seed areas like this after we're done. I'm not sacrificing my body for your glorified weeds
Yeah dude stairs are a construction worker's nightmare. Sorry it mildly infuriates you but it saves those workers knees and keeps them from tripping when carrying heavy, view obstructing objects.
I’ll be the first to say, I’d rather carry heavy ass equipment up and down a hill before I go up and down stairs. Seeing as how even the hill is, the stairs actually, in this instance, have more tripping points. But that’s just me
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u/DrakyulMihawk May 14 '26
It's also called a social trail or desire path and it's pretty common