A 69-year-old Spanish man, Joaquin Garcia was fined this week after officials discovered he hadn’t shown up to work for six years. The civil servant was discovered only when the deputy mayor attempted to give him an award for 20 years of “loyal and dedicated” service in 2010. Joaquin Garcia (69) could easily become a motivational speaker for everyone who hates their job.

“He was still on the payroll. I thought, where is this man? Is he still there? Has he retired? Has he died?”

Joaquin Garcia is a building supervisor in Spain and he didn’t go to office for 6 years, but his employers, which was the local government, didn’t notice his absence. What’s more and interesting is that the man got his due salary of $41,500 on time. He could get away with such a long absence due to a mix-up in the management.

Citing office bullying as the reason behind Garcia’s absence, his lawyer said there was no work for Garcia to do in office. His co-workers at the plant assumed that the water plant was being managed by the local authorities since Garcia hadn’t turned up for long. He has been fined $30,000, a sum approximately equal to his annual salary of tax deductions.

The man who had hired him, Jorge Blas Fernandez (who was the deputy mayor of Cadiz from 1995 to 2015) said, “We thought the water company was supervising him but that was not the case I asked him: what are you doing? What did you do yesterday? And the previous month? He could not answer.” He is said to have read up on philosophy in the time he was bunking office.

Garcia told the court he’d been the victim of workplace bullying due to his family’s socialist politics and he’d been placed in a side role at the water board to keep him from progressing in his career.