Now, a colleague of the pole installer has spoken to the Bay of Plenty Times about how it happened.
The mystery started two weeks ago when teacher Sophie Hucker returned to her Ōtūmoetai home from work to find a square metal pole more than two metres tall had been concreted into her driveway in front of her garage.
Despite her putting a note on it saying “I have no idea what this is doing here — please call me”, the pole stayed in place for nearly a week.
Meanwhile, the story about her unexpected discovery — first reported by the Bay of Plenty Times — went viral, even hitting some international media.
On social media, speculation about what had happened was rife.
Hucker ruled out various theories — a “random gift”, an expensive prank, a sign she should just get a carport — and concluded the most likely answer was that “some tradies made a big stuff-up”.
Sophie Hucker arrived home to find a pole had been cemented into her driveway.
Hucker, who had taken the incident in good humour, declined to publicly name the company involved, but a colleague of the installer spoke to the Bay of Plenty Times on Tuesday — on the condition of anonymity.
He said the installer had been sent to measure up a gate installation job on Chapel St on July 25.
The installer was told the customer would not be home, so he unknowingly pulled up to the wrong address and measured up the space.
He later returned to install the pole in preparation for the rest of the gate, which had not yet arrived at this point.
“It’s been in his head that that’s where the job is going, so he’s come back with the product and put it in without the customer being there.”
“That afternoon… she’s come home from school and gone, ‘What the hell?’”
He said the installer was “oblivious that [he’d] done it in the wrong place” at this point, and no one at work had realised either.
“It wasn’t until that Friday afternoon that I got a message when it had been on the NZ Herald from another guy at work saying, ‘Funny, I wonder who did that?’” he said through laughter.
The man said everyone in the office had a “bit of a laugh about it” on Friday, still not realising one of their staff members was responsible.
He described the story as having then “manifested” over the weekend.
“It blew up over the weekend… and my boss came into the office [on Monday] and said, ‘Have you heard about this?’
“I said, ‘Yeah we were having a laugh about it on Friday’, and [the boss] said it was a guy from work.
He said the installer had seen all the publicity and had come forward.
“That’s when I was like — you’re kidding me,” he said. “As soon as we found out we were like, ‘Mate, you need to go back there and get it out’,” he said.
He said he and the boss initially found it amusing, but also “felt terrible” about the situation, and they got in touch with Hucker via social media immediately.
“I apologise for what’s happened,” he recalled telling her.
He said Hucker was “great” about the whole situation.
The note Sophie Hucker left on the pole someone cemented into her driveway.
He said he and the boss went to see her that afternoon with a bottle of champagne and apologised again in person, by which stage the installer had cut the pole out and patched the spot with concrete.
“[The installer] was obviously very embarrassed, he went back straight away and cut it out… we were quite embarrassed and just needed to make sure we were proactive.”
A gate was being sorted for the person who ordered it.
The Bay of Plenty Times also spoke to the person, but they did not want to comment.
Last week, Hucker told the Bay of Plenty Times a local company had come forward to admit its mistake, which is when she learned the pole was meant to be part of a gate being installed at another property.
