Man skipped work for six years and went unnoticed — until his bosses decided to honor his long service

Many try to find reasons to skip work for a day or two but rarely get away with it. But one man stunned people by not turning up for work for at least six years. No one knew about it until he was due to be awarded for 20 years of loyalty and dedicated service, reported The Guardian. The incident that came to light in 2010 involved a man named Joaquin Garcia, a 69-year-old engineer in Spain, who was working for the local government.

He started working in the southern-western city of Cadiz in 1990 and in 1996, he was posted to the municipal water board, Agua de Cadiz, where his work was to supervise a wastewater treatment plant. Garcia's absence slipped through the cracks due to a classic case of miscommunication. The water company believed the city council was supposed to be in charge of his work and the city council thought that the water company would oversee his work, according to USA Today. In 2010, deputy mayor Jorge Blas Fernandez, who had hired him, started looking for him as he was due to collect his long-service medal. 

Fernandez knew that Garcia was still on the payroll. "I thought, where is this man? Is he still there? Has he retired? Has he died?" he told El Mundo. The former manager of the water board—who had his office opposite Garcia's—told Fernandez that he had not seen him for many years. This was when the deputy mayor decided to call him up to check what was happening. Fernandez shared, "I asked him: what are you doing? What did you do yesterday? And the previous month? He could not answer." A legal case was filed against the employee for not doing a day's work since 2004.

Garcia denied the allegations and said he came to work every day, although not during business working hours. He added that he was a victim of workplace bullying because of his family's socialist politics and had been sidelined at the water board because of that. He was being paid a salary of €37,000 ($40,000) a year and the court fined him €27,000 ($29,341), which was about one year of his salary after tax and was the most that the company could legally ask for, reported BBC. The court found out that Garcia had not occupied his office for "at least six years" and had done "absolutely no work" between 2007 and 2010. The 69-year-old was not fired from his job as he had already retired in 2011.

His friends told the local media that he did not want to report his allegations of harassment because he "had a family to support" and he would not find another job at his age. They added that he was so depressed that he had met a psychiatrist. However, during his time away from work, he became an avid reader of philosophy and an expert on the works of Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher. It was reported that Garcia had written to the mayor requesting not to pay the fine and that he would be asking for a review of the judgment.

This article originally appeared 4 months ago.