WRITTEN ON June 30th, 2005 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Government Computing mails me this far-from-ideal story:

A lazy civil servant has been given a suspended prison sentence in Austria because he never did any work.
Walter Hendelsgruber, 43, took his employers to a tribunal for unfair dismissal but had the tables turned on him. The tribunal ruled his laziness was so extreme it bordered on the criminal – and ordered the case sent to the public prosecutor.
Hendelsgruber was given a suspended 15 month jail sentence for fraud and abuse of office because he took money over a three year period for work that he never did.
The court heard that county clerk Hendelsgruber had allowed the work to mount up in his in-tray without making any attempt to deal with any of it. He had been warned five times that he risked losing his job if he did not start working, and after the fifth warning failed to get a result he was sacked.

Outsourcing is not yet an issue in Austria. Perhaps it won’t be long.