It sounds like a “Seinfeld” episode.
In 2004, the city council in Cadiz, Spain, put Joaquín García in charge of overseeing construction of a wastewater treatment plant, according to the Daily Telegraph. He visited the office, but finding no work and feeling bullied, he stopped showing up. And no one noticed. For six years.
García continued to collect his roughly $41,500 salary until 2010, when an official spotted his name on a list of employees due to receive an award — his for 20 years of service. The official, José Blas Fernández, visited the plant only to discover that no one knew where García was.
“They assumed he had been sent back to city hall,” Fernández told the Telegraph.
García, it turns out, was reading philosophy: He was especially partial to the works of Baruch Spinoza, according to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.