Man fired for using potato chip bag to skip work for two years

An Australian electrician was fired recently for using a potato chip bag to ditch work and play golf, and he actually got away with it for two years before he was caught.

According to Yahoo News Australia, 60-year-old Tom Colella was a senior union delegate and had worked as an electrician for the same company for 20 years. Then one day his employers got an anonymous tip saying Colella had actually been playing golf while he was supposed to be at work at least 140 times during the past two years. Somehow, nobody had noticed his absence.

Like other employees at his company, Colella had a personal digital assistant that tracked his assigned and completed job tasks and also had a GPS that monitored his location. Colella allegedly hid his PDA in an empty foil potato chip bag and sealed it up, which blocked the GPS signal and hid his location from his employers.

Colella initially claimed the PDA had a glitch, but Australia’s Fair Work Commission, a workplace tribunal, declared there was no reasonable explanation for his potato chip bag trick other than trying to sneak out of work. He was reportedly golfing during work for at least 21 days during the month of April.

“Mr. Colella appears to have been deliberately mischievous in acting in this manner,” said tribunal commissioner Bernie Riordan.

Colella allegedly used his chip bag to hide his location, but he was still able to update his job information as though he were completing assigned tasks. Somehow, nobody noticed what was going on. They must have just thought Colella had a serious snack habit, and potato chips are one of the most popular snack foods of the last 10 decades.