>My suggestion: Go back there, do in some hardware in the manner you mentioned, film it all, put it on YouTube, and you'll probably get a gazillion hits. Perhaps you could even start a service. "Send me that hardware you passionately hate and I'll flatten it and post the video." <g>

I grew up about 100m from a railway. We had small coins of quite a soft alloy at the time, so we'd place one of them on the track and let a whole freight train drive over it. It would become gradually flattened into not exactly an ellipsis, but more of a circle which traveled about one or two of its diameters, depending on the length and weight of the train.

IOW, poor hardware :)