Depressing cubicle or fluffy pow?
How do you get paid to shred pow or a catch waves without being a pro snowboarder, skier or surfer? You find a way to slip through the cracks at work.
That’s what a Spanish man from the southwestern city of Cádiz did for six years while employed as a civil servant for the water board, Aqua de Cádiz. The inquiry into Joaquín García’s incredibly awesome workplace scam just wrapped up this week and it was found that from 2007-2010, he did “absolutely no work,” and no one was sure what he did for the three years prior to 2007. He was busted when the man who hired him, deputy mayor Jorge Blas Fernández, went to find him to give him a service award for the public entity and found an empty office. “He was still on the payroll,” Fernández said. “I thought, where is this man? Is he still there? Has he retired? Has he died?”
Nope, turns out Garcia had just been brushing up on his reading, becoming an avid enthusiast of the Dutch philosopher, Spinoza, who’s work helped spark the Enlightenment.
Garcia definitely had something figured out. The inquiry found that he’d played off confusion: the water board believed he reported to the city council while the city council thought he reported to the water board. He was fined around $30,000 for his sneakiness (around one year of his salary). For the record, he blamed his absence on workplace bullying, ironically claiming his co-workers created a hostile environment for him because of his socialist beliefs. Either way, Garcia missed an incredible opportunity to hang out in the Pyrenees or on the beach at Mundaka.
