While half the battle of a successful career is showing up, for Joaquín García, not going to work was actually more lucrative. Only when the 69-year-old Spanish civil servant was expected to receive an award for two decades of loyal service did anyone notice that he had not gone to work for at least six years, according to a report by The Guardian .

García was employed as an engineer by the municipal water board in Cádiz, Spain, where his job was to supervise a waste water treatment plan.



"He was still on the payroll," said the deputy mayor who had hired him, Jorge Blas Fernández, to The Guardian. "I thought, where is this man? Is he still there? Has he retired? Has he died?"



After the former manager of the water board, whose office was across from García, told Fernández he had not seen his employee for several years, the deputy mayor decided to question García and called him in.

"I asked him: What are you doing?" Fernández said. "What did you do yesterday? And the previous month? He could not answer."