A Spanish court has fined Joaquín García, a supervising engineer for the municipal water board in Cádiz, one years salary ($30,000) after realizing he hadn’t showed up for work in 6 years but was still getting paid. They only realized after a higher up wanted to recognize Garcia for his tenure and he was nowhere to be found.
This is like when you move into a new apartment and it already has cable, just on a much larger scale. The report from El Mundo detailed that Garcia wasn’t in his office in the last six years did ‘absolutely no work from 2007 to 2010’. Garcia claims he was working, but just didn’t keep regular hours.
The fine isn’t too bad considering the amount he collected while not showing up- somewhere around $180,000.
My biggest question is when did he realize what was happening? Did he just forget to call in sick one day and nobody noticed? Was this some sort of accidental genius or is he a mastermind?