Bristol Zoo Parking Attendant

[from my email files]

From The London Times:

Outside the Bristol Zoo, in England, there is a parking lot for 150 cars and eight coaches, or buses.
It was manned by a very pleasant attendant with a ticket machine charging cars £1 (about $1.40Cdn) and coaches £5 (about $7).
This parking attendant worked there uninterrupted for all of 25 years.
Then, one day, he didn't turn up for work.
"Oh well,", said Bristol Zoo management, "we'd better phone up the city council and get them to send a new parking attendant."
"Err, no", said the council, "that parking lot is your responsibility."
"Err, no", said Bristol Zoo management, "the attendant was employed by the City Council, wasn't he?"
"Err, NO!" insisted the Council.

Sitting in a villa somewhere on the coast of Spain, is a bloke who had been taking the parking lot fees, estimated at £400 (about $560) per day at Bristol Zoo for the last 25 years. Assuming seven days a week, this amounts to just over £3.6 million ($7 million)!

And no one even knows his name.

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I got a chuckle out of this but thought it best to check out the story so did an online search. According to the Evening Post, the story is an urban myth that began circulating online about 2 years ago (more here). It likely was started as an April Fools joke. Still it is fun to ponder whether it could actually happen. Stranger things than this has happened!

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