My day started very badly, with an argument with a road flagger who told me I had a 'bad attitude'. I arrived at the lane he was controlling; he had his back to me (big no-no) flag down, and a phone to his ear. I waited for about 30 seconds, then grew irritable as nothing was happening (the road was clear). I put my window down and yelled 'Good morning!' He turned around and pointed at the road.
I asked him what on earth that meant, and asked if I can go. He pointed at the road again. I said you have two possible signals and that isn't one of them, now am I staying or going? That was when he told me I had an attitude. I told him I just want to get to work so I can stand around doing fuck all as well.
Then, a couple of weeks later in a different intersection he starting to set up flagging for workers that needed to go in to a manhole in the middle of the intersection where I was in the far left of a double left hand turn. The light goes and the guy saunters out without any signage, plops a pylon down and kind of half makes a wave to the right side of it - it was completely unclear what he wanted done, but since there was nobody in the right lane, it seemed he must be wanting me to come to the right (dangerously traversing lanes in the intersection). Aside from the initial bit of waving, he kind of turned and wasn't really paying attention, so I rolled down the window going by and said "What exactly are you wanting me to do here?" and his reply was pretty snarky, along the lines of "It should be pretty obvious!"
As this was the 2nd incident I had with this guy in a couple of weeks (and when he was at the first intersection it was outside of the building I worked in, I'd seen him do plenty of stupid yelling and whatnot at vehicles), I thought it was ridiculous and was tired of seeing him out doing such a brutal job. I found the company he worked for, called them, and explained what I'd experienced with him. They were pretty profusely apologetic and said they were heading to where he was.
I haven't seen the guy around anywhere since.
Not sure I understand why you'd go be bad flagger - there can't be much to getting up to the 'doing the job acceptably' level.
@kinetix My colleague has a theory it is the hi-vis gear makes them all crazy
The joke did not land and he waved me through, still not the correct signal but by that point I did not care.