Building supervisor Joaquín García should have been pleased when the municipal water company he worked for gave him an award for his 20 years of hard work on behalf of the people of Cádiz, Spain.
However, Mr. Gricia did not even know that his years of toiling on behalf of the people where finally getting the recognition he deserved since he did not bother showing up for work for six years:
Joaquín García, 69, was recently fined $30,000 for the extended paid vacation from a water treatment plant in Cádiz -- the maximum penalty government officials could deliver, the BBC reported.
According to deputy mayor Jorge Blas, it wasn’t until Garcia was due to be recognized for his hard work in 2010 that authorities realized his office was sitting vacant.
"I wondered whether he was still working there, had he retired, had he died? But the payroll showed he was still receiving a salary," Blas told Spanish newspaper El Mundo, according to The Local.
“I called him up and asked him, ‘What did you do yesterday? The month before, the month before that?’ He didn’t know what to say,” Blas said.
Garcia's water company coworkers thought the plant was being overseen by local authorities because they hadn't seen Garcia in so long.
Instead of being fined, Joaquín García should be given a bonus and held up as an example for all government employees. Think of how better off we would be if employees at the IRS,FDA,TSA, NSA, etc. stopped showing up for "work."
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PDFTags: bureaucracy