A Well Planned Retirement...

[pillapow]

Outside England 's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years,it's parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were for cars (?1.40),for buses (about ?7). Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day of work, he just didn't show up; so the Zoo Management called the City Council and asked it to send them another parking agent.

The Council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the Zoo's own responsibility.

The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee.

The City Council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the City payroll.

Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain or France or Italy ... is a man who'd apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own and then had simply begun to show up every day, commencing to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about ?560 per day -- for 25 years.

Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over 7 million pounds ... and no one even knows his name.

[chroma]

Bristol Zoo parking attendant hoax

Submitted by alex on Wed, 2009-06-24 00:00

Bristol Evening Post, Saturday 13 June 2009

It's a story which has been circulated on the internet for months and made people around the world chuckle from behind their computer screens.


Touted as a genuine news article, the tale of a Bristol Zoo parking attendant who lined his own pockets with customers' cash for 23 years before going missing with the loot has set cyberspace alight.


But the Evening Post can confirm the story, which has been emailed to thousands of people across the globe in recent months, is nothing more than an urban myth ? and the real attendants say the joke is starting to wear thin.
Our newsroom, as well as the offices of Bristol Zoo, has been inundated with messages asking if the story is true, particularly as some versions say it has recently appeared in the Evening Post.


The story has been published on many blogs and forums on the internet and even caught the attention of the police after one person who read it made a complaint.


The story in the email being circulated states the car park at Bristol Zoo has been manned by a single attendant for the past 23 years, who had taken advantage of a mix-up between the zoo and the city council over who was responsible for the operation to collect drivers' money for himself before retiring on the proceeds.


Bristol Zoo insists there has never been any confusion over parking attendants and says it has several attendants and more than one car park ? none open to coaches.
A version of the story did appear in the Evening Post two years ago ? in a feature on urban myths published to coincide with April Fools' Day.


Parking attendant Cliff Smith, 58, who was on duty at the Clifton Down car park yesterday, said: "I've worked here for about five years and it was about two years ago that this email started to circulate. It was around April time, which might explain things, but we didn't really take much notice of it.
"Then in about April of this year it appeared again. Someone mentioned it to me, then a couple of zoo members said it had been circulated around their companies.
"Three days later a policeman turned up because it had gone to Bath and North East
Somerset Council and someone there had told the police.
"It's getting a bit boring now but it still seems to going around."
Bristol Evening Post website:
Bristol Zoo parking attendant myth | Bristol News | This is Bristol

[manxspud]

yea this 1 has done the rounds a fair few times now ...