rSlash - r/Askreddit I Get Paid $1,000,000/year to Do Nothing

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

0:00 Intro 0:12 News article 1:07 8 Years 1:54 Similar story 2:39 600k 3:47 Software engineer 5:14 Just clocking in and out 5:35 Top performers 6:35 Similar story 7:40 Meat manager 8:18 Relief pool 9:27 Marine on paper 11:01 Huge deposit 11:58 Auto pay 12:39 Jacket 12:55 Sold company Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bocas del Toro, Panama. A secluded seaside hideaway, Scott Makeda has no idea that his tropical haven is about to become his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. Holbert rents a room and that's where he set up his business as a fake shrink. Accusations of a gringo mafia. Gun running, drugs. A slaughtered family.

And then he goes back and he plants another bullet. A killer on tape. Hey man, I'm guilty. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm your host, Candice DeLong. From Treefort Media and Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, Welcome to r slash ask Reddit, where I have kind of a weird video for you today, but it's so interesting and odd that I had to make a video about this. Basically, this thread starts off with this user posting a news article about this guy in Spain who got

hired for a local government job and then just literally never showed up to work. For six years, this guy didn't show up to work once, but he kept collecting his salary of $41.5 thousand dollars. And get this guys, the way that he was caught was his employer wanted to give him an award for being an excellent employee. Then this company realized that he was nowhere to be found, so they tried to charge him and they successfully found this guy guilty of stealing from the company, but the guy only had to pay back $30,000. So over six years, this guy made $249,000 for not coming into work a single day of his life and then had to pay back 30K. So that's just the opening of this video. But down in the comments, we have tons and tons of similar stories, which I think are super interesting. So I had to make a video about this.

Our first reply is from Don't F***ing Die. Years ago, I was working for a company in an industry that was going into a downturn. The sales manager had been there the longest of his team, about 5 years. He started going through his list of employees to figure out where to trim the fat when he discovered a name that he didn't know. A name that had been on the payroll for over eight years. He asked around and couldn't find anyone who knew the guy. So, of course, that was the first person to get the axe. About a month later, the local paper did a

piece about how the layoffs were affecting the region. They interviewed that guy for their story. Honestly, I can't even blame the workers in these stories because if management is that incompetent, then they kind of deserve it. And beneath that, a similar story from Miserable Resort. I worked at a company where the owner and sales manager had control issues. I was supposed to be on sales, but they were such control freaks that I didn't end up doing anything for an entire year. The only work I did was sit in on their phone calls. They didn't let me talk, take any calls or send any outreach for an entire year.

I had like 3 calls a day where they just had me listen in and do nothing else. The onboarding was supposed to be 30 days, but it lasted a full year. My bosses seemed happier doing my work themselves and having me shadow them. The only work I ever did was take notes on the calls sometimes, which they never asked for. So literally, after a year of doing nothing, I quit. Our next reply is from OK Energy. I read about this woman on the Buffalo Fire Department payroll for 7 years without having worked a minute. They put her on leave while they investigated her conduct related to payroll and this woman on the Buffalo Fire Department payroll for seven years without having worked a minute. They put her on leave while they investigated her conduct related to payroll

and then just flat out never told her to come back to work. She collected half a million dollars there while also working another job. Basically, the woman was suspended with pay, but the process kept getting postponed so much that the DA just dropped the case, but never the charges. So the woman was still technically suspended with pay. After this came out, the local government ordered her back to work, but the woman had so much stored up sick days, vacation time, and sick leave that she just cashed them all in so that she could formally retire.

She managed to get $600,000 over like 6-7 years. Plus all the benefits of being a public servant on top of working full time at a private sector job. Hahaha. Yo, using all this stored up vacation, that's so funny. Our next reply is from PrettyAwesomeGuy. This reminds me of my friend's dad. He was a software engineer and manager at a government contracting company that was

bought out by a massive national firm. His team went under new management and very quickly his new manager and the rest of the team were reassigned, shuffled around, and before he knew it, he was the only person on his team. He asked his supervisor about his responsibilities, and every time, they said that they would find something or initiate processes for a new department. He was pretty senior, so everyone just assumed that he was either running something or hard at work on new projects. After several months of tying up old projects and helping his former teammates with work, he realized that he had no new work, no direct lines of reporting,

and that the people he asked about restructuring were also gone since they were restructured. For the next seven or eight years, he was paid over $200,000 a year to play World of Warcraft. That's all he did. He kept getting paid and he would occasionally go into the office. Eventually there was a company-wide audit that discovered what was going on. He was sent to another area but then quickly resigned. He couldn't find much work after that. He was a legacy language guy and the software was ancient.

He ended up starting a woodworking business that does pretty average. But still, what a crazy run! Yo, getting paid 200k a year to play video games, he's practically a Twitch streamer. Our next reply is from Theodore Throw. I have a friend who fell asleep in his car during lunch on his first day of a warehouse job. Nobody noticed so he'd go, physically clock in, leave, come back at 5 and then clock out. This lasted 8 years and he was only fired because he came in obviously hungover to clock out.

Our next reply is from Gismo Howard. That news article isn't surprising. For the past 9 months, I've been graded as a top performer where I work, despite the fact that I do literally nothing all day. Then beneath that we have this story from Sometimes Stutters. We used to have a guy who worked remote and was in charge of planning and scheduling a couple of production lines. He was by far the best scheduler and we never had any issues with him. Well one day we hired someone new and they were like, what the hell?

I didn't know Bob just started here too. He's phenomenal. Turns out this scheduling guy, Bob, had at least four jobs doing planning and scheduling, all remote. He had automated his work down to a couple of hours per month and spent his days just collecting paychecks at his lake house. He was fired from at least two of the jobs when he was discovered, which I thought was BS because the new person we hired sucked. Yo, why fire the guy? If he's doing the job amazingly, what's the issue?

That he's smarter than you? And beneath that, a similar story from Atrem. I was this guy for a few years, five years ago. I only had one job. It was 40 hours a week in Salaried. I had barely any supervision because I worked in Honolulu, but my boss lived on Maui and flew over only on Tuesdays and half a day on Wednesday. My 40 hour a week job really only took like 10 hours of actual work to do, so I just did

those 10 hours during the two days when my boss was in town. Well eventually they figured it out and they said that they weren't going to fire me because I was doing a good job. But they didn't have other work for me to do so they were going to make me an hourly employee and only pay me for 20 hours a week. So I quit. For 3 years after that I would get random texts from people that I didn't know asking how to do that job because the boss kept giving each new person she hired my phone number.

The island I live on isn't a huge island, so I would occasionally see people that I worked with, and they would always tell me about how the new person they hired couldn't do my job. So why they fired me in the first place, I have no clue. Our next reply is from Throwaway. I used to work in a small European style grocery store as a meat cutter. The meat department manager was one of the laziest and most incompetent people I have ever worked for. He would fall asleep standing up while working. I always assumed that he was on some kind of drug.

He had to take about 8 months of medical leave once, and while he was gone, all of our department's numbers increased drastically. The day this doofus comes back to our district, the manager brings him a reward for having the best me department in the region. The comment beneath that. Task failed successfully. Our next reply is from Flashkit. About 15 years ago, I was working in the offshore industry when the company I worked for sold off three of their old drilling rigs.

I was part of the crew on one of these old rigs. So regarding these three rigs that the new company had just purchased, one was already commissioned and drilling in the North Sea. The second one, which I was supposed to work on, was still being built in Singapore. Number three hadn't even started production yet. So all these crews from these old rigs were made into new crews for their new rigs. And all of a sudden, the company had a ton of guys that they had spent a lot of money on training, courses and so on. They didn't want to just lay us off for fear of losing valuable and experienced manpower.

So they basically just benched us and had us fill in replacements if someone got sick or quit. And for some reason, they forgot that I existed. So I spent almost 12 months in the relief pool doing absolutely nothing the entire time. Well, except for fixing things around my house, enjoying time with my wife, and watching my lovely salary tick into my account each month. Ah, those were the glory days. Our next reply is from Jerhoo. So to understand this story, in the military, administration is kind of like HR. They handle personnel records, payroll, all that kind

of stuff. Apparently, a few of these admin guys created a marine on paper. This marine didn't actually exist, but the admin guys handled all the forms so long as they had them in the system. So as far as the big Department of Defense computer system knows, yeah sure, this guy exists. These admin guys were splitting this imaginary Marine's paycheck. It worked out for a good while because they kept filing the right forms. This imaginary Marine was getting promoted, getting pay raises, all that. Except the Admin guys must have forgotten that after three years, with zero disciplinary problems in this guy's record book, he automatically qualified for the Marine

Corps Good Conduct Medal. So the record system puts this fake Marine on the awards list, and none of the admin guys catch it. Come that first of the month formation, the first sergeant has his list of awardees and of course he's calling out this random marine's name. Where the hell is Corporal So-and-so? And everyone's like who? Because no one's ever heard of him. So obviously as easy as it was for the admin guys to keep this unnoticed for as long as they did, once people realize there's his mystery name on the record book, it's also super easy to audit the records and figure out what actually happened.

So those admin guys ended up getting hammered. Our next reply is from uninvited butt noises. About 20 years ago at the place I worked, this intern was offered a job. Two weeks later, he called up my boss to mention that more than $1 million was direct deposited into his account from the company. Apparently, the HR person entered the kid's social security number into the wage rate section.

They fixed it. Two weeks later the kid got another $1 million direct deposit. When the company called the kid to retrieve it again They found out that he had already spent a good chunk of it So the guy just returned the rest of the money and then quit This is super funny, but just fair warning to out there, a bank error like this in your favor is NOT LEGAL. You cannot just take the money. You will absolutely go to court for this and go to jail so don't do what this kid did. You know, unless you can get away with it. Our next reply is from Blockera. I know a girl who was working as an escort on those sugar daddy

websites. Usually she would start a relationship with an older rich gentleman. So she starts one of these relationships and right off the bat she tells the guy that she needs $5,000 a month for her expenses. The guy put her on auto payments. She saw him maybe 3-4 times in the first few months and the rest of the time she's working with different guys around the world. Five years later, she's still getting payments from this guy every month, even though she fell out of contact with him years ago.

Wow. Imagine being so rich that you can just pay someone 5k a month and not even notice it. Our next reply is from Macker. I remember a story in the Sunday Times about a Greek civil servant who came into work each day, hung his jacket over the back of his chair, and then just went home for the day. This went on for four years because everyone assumed that he was just somewhere else in the building. Our next reply is from Far Peach. In the early 1990s, I was hired December 20th right before Christmas with a Canadian company

after a long interview process with multiple senior level executives. I had filled out all the new hire paperwork remotely. The plan was to start January 4th, and by the way, I'm an American that was living in Texas. The company was acquired by an Indian conglomerate three days later. All senior level executives, my boss included, received buyouts and left the company. Good for them. However, there was no communication about this to me specifically as to who I'd be

reporting to. So a week later on January 4th, I call my new leader and get no answer. I try multiple times throughout the day and finally get a hold of a receptionist who tells me the situation. She and everyone else were in obvious disarray. I explain my situation and she transfers my call to a senior leader's voicemail where I leave a voicemail with an explanation of my situation. Next day I call again, leave a message.

I get no response after multiple attempts and messages. I call another receptionist who transfers me to an Indian receptionist. Finally, I'm transferred to some kind of senior manager in Indio who doesn't know anything, but she says that she'll investigate and get me taken care of. One week later, I get a FedEx delivery of a company laptop with no instructions of how to log in. Two weeks later on a Friday, I get a knock on my door and it's FedEx with a priority letter and inside

of it is my paycheck. Long story short, I called at least 25 times over the next two weeks talking to so many people. I explained my situation but I just couldn't get anyone to help me or figure things out so I just gave up. However, every other Friday by 10am FedEx would knock on my door with a paycheck. This was a six-figure sales job too. Exactly one year after I was hired, I got a call from a guy with a heavy Indian accent

from Human Resources. He said that due to corporate restructuring, they'd be letting me go and they appreciated all the time and work I'd done for the company over the last year. But tough decisions had to be made. He was clearly reading a script. I said I understand and I asked him where I should sit my laptop and he said that I should just keep it. Oh man, why can't this happen to me?

That was r slash ask reddit and if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new reddit podcast episodes every single day.