May

23

snake house at the london zooFrom 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.


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2 Comments so far

  1. rif on May 23, 2010 1:10 pm

    Urban legend.

  2. vic on May 24, 2010 11:57 am

    let one point out that one was aware of the urban legend thing about this as one is with Lobogola the fake wandering scholar. but since these things are researched at the British Museum of some such they are not entirely without carry over value. vic

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