A Well Planned Retirement

[RenStarr]

I've got no idea if this actually happened, but it makes for an interesting story.  Kinda hard to believe someone could pull this off for 25 years. 


From The London Times:

A Well-Planned Retirement


Outside England's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years, its parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were 1 for cars ($1.40), 5 for buses (about $7).


Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day of work, he just didn't show up; so the Zoo Management called the City Council and asked it to send them another parking agent.


The Council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the Zoo's own responsibility. The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee.. The City Council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the City payroll.


Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain or France or Italy ... is a man who'd apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own and then had simply begun to show up every day, commencing to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about $560 per day -- for 25 years.



Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over $7 million dollars ...... and no one even knows his name.

[Woodland Artisan]

When in doubt ...

http://www.snopes.com/crime/clever/carpark.asp

[Merlin the Elder]

Woodland, you're such a party pooper!  But then so am I. I use Snopes constantly trying to stop the proliferation of trash emails in my inbox.  You gotta admit, though, it's one of the better stories.

A sort-of-similar tale: My dad, when he came back from WWII (he was a POW), was given his choice of duty stations. He found one in his home town of St Louis at Lambert Field. He showed up, but found no military office to speak of, but since it was on the list provided by the Air Force, he simple reported to the manager of the airport every morning.

Sometime later (about a year, if I remember correctly), someone decided he was AWOL. But, he successfully proved that he had been at the duty station, as required, and no action was taken. Unfortunately, he didn't leave Lambert with $7 million...

[Merlin]

The Bristol Zoo assures us this is not true.

That's what I would say too if I allowed this to go on that long.