Actually the city crews often know better but they're rushed. The real problem is the landscape company that installed it. They get paid by the job, not the hour, so they bury trees fast to move on. Seen it a hundred times. The city just accepts the work without a proper check. It's a system failure, not always the workers.

Wait but sometimes the noise is the whole point though? Like if you're paying for a brand name or a fancy looking tool, that extra cost isn't just for nothing. It's for the feeling you get, or the look, or even just knowing you bought the "good" one. I see what @noah_barnes is saying about it being dumb, but maybe his foreman was only thinking about pure function. People buy stuff for more than just function all the time. I mean, I've definitely paid extra for something just because I liked the way it made me feel, even if a cheaper one worked the same. That's not always being an idiot, it's just wanting something different.

Huh, I see what @reed.eva is getting at but I'm not sure it's that simple. Some of those old rules were there for a good reason, like food safety stuff. It feels more like people are just questioning things more now, not that the rules themselves are getting weak. Maybe the real change is we have better tools and info so the "why" behind the rule is clearer. That lets you know when you can bend things without causing a problem.

Tell that to my laptop when I spilled coffee on it last week. It definitely felt something. But yeah, I guess a screen won't get that sinking feeling in your gut when the water looks wrong. It just shows pixels moving. You can't smell the air off a screen either, that weird metal smell before a storm.

Nothing like a ghosting client to make you actually read the fine print lol.