A 14 year siesta

Congratulations (I think?) to Joaquín García, a Spanish civil servant, who managed to absent himself from work for 6 years while still drawing his full €37,000 salary from Cadiz City Council. His absence finally came to light when his name appeared on a list of those being considered for a 20 year long service award and the Deputy Mayor decided to contact him.

In 2004 Mr. Garcia was sent to a post at Cadiz Water to oversee the building of a new water treatment plant. A subsequent investigation in 2010 revealed that colleagues at the site had no knowledge of his whereabouts and simply had assumed that he had been recalled to City Hall.

It was later revealed that he may actually have skipped work from as long ago as 1996. The phantom employee made a complaint that it was the council's responsibility to ensure that he attended his place of employment and it was not his fault if they were negligent. He also stated that he had suffered workplace bullying on account of his political beliefs.

When challenged as to what he had been doing during this time he was unable to provide any answer. He also claimed that he feared for his job and was too depressed to report the alleged harassment. He subsequently retired in 2011 and was ordered by the court to repay €27,000 in compensation, the equivalent of 1 year's net salary.

I feel certain that there will be those who will say this could only happen in Spain, but I am equally sure that there will be a few managers in this country who will be having sleepless nights wondering how many phantoms there are on their payroll that have slipped beneath the radar of detection.

The left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing would seem to be a common management mantra in the modern work place so it is perhaps understandable that one department may have no knowledge of another department within the same organisation. Nevertheless to make yourself virtually invisible for 14 years is simply mind-blowing. Do they have no phones in Spain? If I was to leave my desk unattended it would be buried under a mountain of post within a month. What happened to all of this man's mail? Sooner or later someone must have complained or returned the items to the sender. Had no one picked up on the fact that this employee never responded to any of their emails?

There must have been a time when the office needed to be re-decorated, the electrics tested, a fire

drill scheduled or the cleaner noticed that they hadn't emptied a particular waste bin for several months.

You can't blame the guy for wanting to escape. In my days of working as a 'pencil jockey', when staff had to use writing implements instead of keyboards there were 2 thoughts that frequently crossed my mind. If I were to suffer a fatal heart attack at my desk, how many weeks would it be before anyone noticed that I was dead? My work colleagues were predominantly male so it would be unlikely that any of them would pass comment that you had been wearing the same clothes for several days. Nor were they likely to pass comment on any unusually odious smell. It has to be said that there were a few of my colleagues who, from time to time, gave me reason to suspect that they may have expired (probably from boredom).

The other thought that used to cross my mind involved working for a fantasy firm based loosely on my perception of a few dubious characters I had encountered. It is said that staff at banks often while away the hours dreaming of ways to beat the system or what they would do with the money if a sum with a huge number of zeros mysteriously appeared in their personal account. Similarly, the firm of 'Scribble and Scratch' as it became known opened the door to endless opportunities of breaking the tedium of the working day.

The nature of the hypothetical business changed occasionally but ultimately I decided that the scheme I had in mind was best suited to the legal profession, primarily because the underlying principles seem to simply focus on relieving the client of as much money as possible in exchange for the minimum level of service.

To this end neither Messrs Scribble nor Scratch had any formal legal training, preferring to rely on their own version of 'legalese', a technical jargon which sounded plausible to the layman. The pretence was that the couple had worked together in the customer complaints department of some indeterminate company and their legal expertise was gleaned from reading the range of warranties on various goods. Under the rules of the game Scribble and Scratch were on their uppers, working from a garret above a kebab shop. Their office consisted of a shared desk, a phone, a laptop, a dartboard and a kettle.

The idea was to invent scenarios for them to 'deal with creatively' that involved them doing as little as possible. The acquisition of 'money' was not the primary goal, it was the accumulation of points that was the real objective. Points would be awarded based on the nature of the scenario, the time taken to 'resolve' the issue and the inventiveness of the responses. The longer it took to resolve the issue the more chance you had to score points. Nothing was deemed off limits and the more devious or absurd the action or explanation the higher the score awarded. The dartboard was the arbiter of any delays incurred whether it be minutes, hours or days. This could mean the length of time a customer was kept waiting on the phone or the number of days required to obtain a replacement part. Penalty points were deducted if you were required to take any positive action to assist the customer, such as sending a letter (as opposed to simply lying about it). Adhering to the principle of 'one step forward, 2 steps back' it was sometimes advantageous to instigate a positive action in order to open up fresh opportunities to further bamboozle the customer and convince them that you are on the case.

Sadly, technology has moved on, which has rather removed the need for staff to think creatively in such situations. It would seem that the only explanation or excuse required by any individual working in a service industry these days is to blame the technology. The advancement of phone systems now means that customers can be placed on hold for days or transferred from department to department ad infinitum without any human intervention. Some companies either choose to put no contact details on their website or alternatively list so many contact numbers that there is little chance that any customer would be able to get in touch with someone capable of dealing with their enquiry.

It is infuriating to see so many websites where the customer relations department is portrayed as a sizeable group of impeccably groomed, ethnically diverse, grinning faces in ultra modern offices. This seems to be a favourite ploy for local authorities and utility companies many of whom see placing the words customer and service in the same sentence as anathema.

Messrs Scribble and Scratch may have gone to that great garret in the sky but they could equally be sitting on a beach in some tax haven having become insanely wealthy by cornering the market in red tape and doing absolutely nothing.

Feel the rush

As you may know I am particularly keen on my sport and have been dipping in and out of the World Athletics Championships in Beijing over the past few weeks. Pleasing as it was to see the English team doing well it was great to see David Rudisha back to his best. Top of the tree as ever was Usain Bolt who having narrowly beaten arch rival Justin Gatlin to retain his 100 metres title then destroyed him and the rest of the field in the 200 metres final. It may take him longer to tie his laces than it does to complete the race but there is always a sense of expectation whenever he takes to the track. I still get the feeling that he has more left in the tank, maybe he is saving it for Rio but I would hate to think he is holding back because if you're going to break records then there is no time like now because there are no guarantees of form or fitness in the future.

With the athletics still fresh in my mind I was in the locker room of my local sports club on Friday having participated in the regular squash night session. A couple of my mates and I were discussing recent events when I became distracted by an individual who had just entered the changing rooms. Usually at around 08:30 the changing room is packed full of sweaty squash players and members of the Taekwondo club. From what I have seen of their training sessions the rough and tumble for space in the changing rooms is the closest they get to justifying it as a contact sport.

This may have been a weekend that the Taekwondo boys went away since we pretty much had the room to ourselves and the guy who had just walked in. I was wondering what sport he was planning to participate in at this time of night since he was not carrying any equipment other than a holdall. Generally I do not pay much attention to others in the locker room since I find the steamy environment oppressive and it fogs up my glasses. An issue that is not helped by the heating having been on for most of the Summer.

From the shower I watched as this newcomer walked up and down the room, admiring himself in the wash basin mirrors. I must admit that being a public sports centre I do tend to keep one eye on my kit while I am taking a shower, and this guy was behaving oddly. He had left the room twice and returned by the time I had finished my shower. My friends and I were once more debating the athletics when he eventually decided to change into his gym kit. He then disappeared into one of the toilet cubicles and suitably refreshed, emerged, stripped off, jumped in the shower and got back into his civvies. I was bidding my farewell to my friends as he started to dress and thought no more about it until I was on my way home. Was this some sort of prank or was it the shortest workout in history? Maybe the guy strained himself in every sense of the word. Perhaps it was some new sport that I have never heard of. There seem to have been quite a few weird attempts over recent years to create unusual sports - chess boxing, free running, etc. One university even tried introducing a form of squash played in total darkness, with lines marked in luminous paint.

I have been on the premises when a couple of lorry drivers were caught by the staff trying to have a free shower at the centre's expense, that I can understand, what happened on Friday is beyond my comprehension.

Thinking about the shortest workout ever reminded me of a time when I worked in a small branch sales office with a disproportionate number of sports enthusiasts. There were only 32 of us, 23 of whom were male and with ages ranging from mid-20s to mid-50s, yet we managed to put out a competitive rugby 15 against the rest of the company. The 23 was reduced to 22 on account of one individual (who would have been a shoe-in had he been able to get a boot over his plaster cast or his crutch). We were pretty well covered in most areas with the exception of height so we were quite relieved when one of the managers who happened to be 6' 3'” and had only recently given up the game agreed to play in the second row. We were a complete scratch team, who had never played together, though many of us played or had played for different local club sides. This manager, who shall remain nameless, looked very good in the changing rooms, clean but well used boots, his own scrum cap, ran on the spot nicely in the warmup and gave a rousing braveheart rant during the huddle (more Gielgudian eloquence than Olivieresque abrasion).

Some were impressed by his keenness in rehearsing his 'hakka' in the dressing room, personally I thought he was going through the dance steps for 'Brotherhood of Man's Eurovision hit, 'Save your kisses for me'. In hindsight a hakka was a bit overambitious given that we had never played together as a team before let alone practiced synchronised grunting and gurning.

The 'rest of the company' won the toss and chose to kick off at which point our game plan fell apart, as did the aforementioned manager. A lofted drop kick drifted out towards the touch line and 'our secret weapon' collapsed on the floor like a house of cards before the ball had even bounced. The game was halted, his leg inspected and 2 of our cheerleaders were summoned to support him as he hobbled from the pitch. I believe there was ice available for his torn calf muscle though our 'sponge man' being the sympathetic soul that he was handed him a cold sponge and chose to save the ice for the Gin and Tonics.

In retrospect we were a fairly unusual bunch since we were the only branch to ever put out a team consisting entirely of staff members. We managed to field a passable football 11, a strong cricket team and 2 squash teams, one of which contained 4 county level players.

It is a sad reflection of how attitudes towards work and leisure have changed that the company that I now work for was recently challenged by one of our customers to a 'friendly' game of cricket yet was unable to mass more than 6 players willing to represent the company from a national workforce of over 2500.

If I have learned anything in my years of playing sport it is to expect the unexpected so last Friday was nothing really out of the normal.