the parking attendant

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 pound for cars ($1.40),

5 pounds for busses (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 some such scenario), 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.