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A long time ago, on the Something Awful forums, a man who would only identify himself as "moonshine" recounts his remarkable tale as a forgotten employee.
In a 5 or 6 part story, he describes how he worked at an unnamed company in Detroit since he was 16. He worked his way up to middle management by his early 20's. His company was hit hard after 911, and the department he was in charge of was disbanded to just him. For a few months, he was running his department by himself.
Eventually, a new VP decided to relocate him to a satellite facility. Shortly after that, he learns via email that his department has been merged with another department. He continues to go into work every day and wait to see if he will get laid off, transferred, promoted, whatever.
It turns out that the company forgot about him. He stayed in a sort of corporate limbo where he didn't have any responsibilities, yet still got a direct deposit every other week. All he did, was browse forums quite like this one, and look up baseball scores, all day, every day, and got paid for it.
No one knows if it's a true story or not. It's so well written, that some believe that it must be fiction. I'm not sure, because I've researched this, "Forgotten Employee," scenario and apparently, it's a lot more common that you would think. They call them, "ghost employees." It happens by accident. In a large company, when people get shuffled around from department to department, some get lost in the shuffle and just become another number. I've read that someone got away with this for over a decade, but when the direct deposit stopped coming in, the man complained to the company. It was only then that they found out that the company discovered that they were paying an employee for nothing for over 10 years.
Here's a link to the story. I highly recommend you read it while you're at work, as it was intended to be read at work. It's the American Dream. To get paid by a large, corporate machine to do absolutely nothing. Brings a tear to my eye.
https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/
In a 5 or 6 part story, he describes how he worked at an unnamed company in Detroit since he was 16. He worked his way up to middle management by his early 20's. His company was hit hard after 911, and the department he was in charge of was disbanded to just him. For a few months, he was running his department by himself.
Eventually, a new VP decided to relocate him to a satellite facility. Shortly after that, he learns via email that his department has been merged with another department. He continues to go into work every day and wait to see if he will get laid off, transferred, promoted, whatever.
It turns out that the company forgot about him. He stayed in a sort of corporate limbo where he didn't have any responsibilities, yet still got a direct deposit every other week. All he did, was browse forums quite like this one, and look up baseball scores, all day, every day, and got paid for it.
No one knows if it's a true story or not. It's so well written, that some believe that it must be fiction. I'm not sure, because I've researched this, "Forgotten Employee," scenario and apparently, it's a lot more common that you would think. They call them, "ghost employees." It happens by accident. In a large company, when people get shuffled around from department to department, some get lost in the shuffle and just become another number. I've read that someone got away with this for over a decade, but when the direct deposit stopped coming in, the man complained to the company. It was only then that they found out that the company discovered that they were paying an employee for nothing for over 10 years.
Here's a link to the story. I highly recommend you read it while you're at work, as it was intended to be read at work. It's the American Dream. To get paid by a large, corporate machine to do absolutely nothing. Brings a tear to my eye.
https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/
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