Patience and Discipline!

Received this in an email: None of it verifiable, but certainly fun to think about!

A Well-Planned Retirement

Outside England 's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years, its parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were 1 for cars ($1.40), 5 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 dollars ...... and no one even knows his name.

I once read a book that spoke of British patience and discipline. It talked about far-flung outposts of the British Empire, observable by no one, where faithful employees none-the-less showed up for work every day, rain or shine, to fulfill their assigned duties. Patience and discipline.

The Brit at the zoo was most certainly patient and disciplined. But don't you wonder how it could have started?

I can imagine some well-intentioned 1985 zoo patron, trying to help the then-administrators of the zoo raise revenue for the welfare of the animals. He suggested they charge for parking.

They whined that it would take some equipment and someone would have to be employed as an attendant. He offered to volunteer both - and did.

When he had accumulated a sum of money for parking fees, no one would accept the money: They did not have a bank account; They would have to form a committee to elect a treasurer; They would need to employ an accountant to compute taxes or other fiscal liabilities. They had other pressing things to do - like shoveling dung out of the elephant's enclosure.

The old guy just agreed to hang onto the dough until they solved their problems. Time passed and the administration of the zoo changed. The patient, disciplined old Brit continued in his self-imposed obligations.

Then, one day, some asshole insulted him in the way people often insult those they consider "beneath" them.

The old guy said nothing, just went home - wherever that may now be!

May he live happily ever after!