Plenty of Americans feel that their job is worthless, that they are worthless as employees, and that their bosses are worthless, especially when said bosses believe they are “increasing productivity” through micromanagement. They sit at their cubicles and hum “Like A Boss” to themselves, all while daydreaming about that sweet future moment Gary Cole their boss is eaten by a dinosaur after Rambo shoved a stick of dynamite up his ass.
Killing the boss and a dinosaur — it’s the American way.
69-year-old civil service worker Joaquin Garcia, however, did not subscribe to American fantasy-violence as means to deal with the stress of his job. Instead, he just up and left… for six years.
How did his employer, the city of Cadiz, Spain, come to realize the guy who was supposed to be supervising a waste water treatment plant had been AWOL? They were in the process of giving him a 20-year service award.
Hollywood writers couldn’t make this up.
A few days ago, a court ruled against the civil service worker. Garcia was fined 27,000 Euro (over $30,000 U.S.) — the equivalent of one year’s net salary — for not showing up to work for “at least six years” (though possibly as many as 14 ) and having done “absolutely no work” from 2007 to 2010.
Garcia retired in 2011.
Deputy Mayor Jorge Blas Fernandez, the man who hired Garcia in the first place, was set to give the service award to Garcia, but was stunned to find out that the civil service worker hadn’t been seen “in several years.” Fernandez told newspaper el Mundo that Garcia “was still on the payroll” and that he thought, “Where is this man? Is he still there? Has he retired? Has he died?”
It wasn’t until Fernandez called Garcia and probed him regarding his whereabouts that Fernandez was able to ascertain that Garcia just straight up played hooky for the better part of a decade, if not longer.
Why did Garcia bail? According to his statements, Garcia alleged that he was bullied and was given a job with nothing to do because of his socialist politics.
What did he do over his six year vacation? According to Garcia, he spent time reading the works of Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, one of the leading figures credited with laying the groundwork for Enlightenment thinking and modern Biblical criticism.
But why not quit? According to Garcia, he needed to provide for his family and was worried that at his age, his job prospects were dismal.
Former civil service worker Joaquin Garcia has since petitioned to the deputy mayor not to pay the fine. He has also requested the court’s judgement to be reviewed.
Featured image by Stephen Edmonds, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
