Man Used Empty Chip Bag To Help Him Play Hooky From Work For 2 Years

Many people have felt the urge to play hooky from work once or twice, but not many act on it, especially if work is tracking your location with a GPS. One man, however, was able to utilize an empty chip bag to befuddle his employers and sneak out of work over 140 times in two years.

Photo: Doctorhawkes on Wikimedia Commons

According to The Telegraph, Australian electrician Tom Colella would hide his work PDA in an empty bag of Twisties to prevent his GPS from being tracked. Twisties chip bags contain a lining of foil that allows them to act like a makeshift “Faraday cage” that blocks electromagnetic signals. By placing his tracker in the empty chip bag, Colella was able to avoid work to go golfing on multiple occasions as the GPS signal was glitched up. Thus, he was basically getting paid his $111,000 Australian dollar salary (about $84,000 in US dollars) to play golf a la Donald Trump.

After two years, Colella was eventually caught and fired by his company after an anonymous letter was filed with the business that spilled the beans on his sneaky actions. Colella appealed the firing with Australia’s Fair Work Commission, but the tribunal court ruled in favor of his bosses, who presented evidence that Colella was at the golf club and didn’t check in to required work areas on multiple occasions.

Hopefully, Colella didn’t blow all of the salary he made playing hooky, since he’s now working as an Uber driver making just a few hundred bucks a week.