Flanking

One man with a sign saying stop, another with a sign saying go.
"Who the hell did they think they were?!"
I have no idea who they thought they were. All I'm saying is one had a sign saying stop, the other go.
"No, you misunderstand me. What I mean is, who did they think they were to be ordering people about, telling them whether to stop or go?"
Functionaries. People performing a function. And the nature of the function? They were flanking a machine, a machine belching out big ugly volumes of noise into the public arena.
"Why would they be flanking that? It must have been doing something other than belching volumes, surely."
It probably was. In fact if you went over to have a look, it's most likely you'd find it was digging a hole.