Tales of the proverbial Forgotten Employee are a staple of Internet lore. Their stories can be found on Reddit, on Quora and, most famously, on Something Awful, the Web 1.0 message board which hosts the first viral forgotten employee story, about a man who achieved the dream of getting paid to do nothing.

All of these tales follow the same basic structure: An employee, usually at a big company, continues to receive a paycheck despite doing no work. Oftentimes, the employee gets lost in an organizational reshuffle. Sometimes it’s the result of a clerical error. But whatever the case, the checks keep clearing.

It’s usually tough to discern the veracity of these stories. But for the latest installment of our series on The Secret Lives of Men, Esquire found a real-life forgotten employee who spent two years getting paid for a full-time job at a major credit card company while doing no work. More than twenty years later, he still runs the business he launched with all that subsidized free time.

Joe B., 46, Portland

I went to the employment agency and the agent asked, “Can you do ten key?” I knew ten key, an accounting calculator, from working in restaurants and adding up people’s bills. I said yes, and the agent asked, “Is $19 an hour enough for you? By the way, it’s for a major credit card company.”

I was twenty, I had never worked a white collar job in my life, I didn’t even have a high school education, and they offered me a job nearly three times the minimum wage. I said yes.

I didn’t even know what the job was. All I was given was an address. I showed up in a button-down shirt I bought from a thrift store, got my security tag and they walked me around the office, giving me the formal tour. I was shown to my desk and told someone would come around to train me—but nobody ever came.

That’s awesome, I thought. Easy first day.

Day two, I find the person who’s supposed to train me. I knock on his office door and he says, “I’m busy. I don’t have time for this right now.”

I tell him, “Okay, cool, I’ll be at my desk when you’re ready.” He never came.

A week went by like that before I started bringing in my own work to do. I would bring in books to read. I read about Pol Pot, about the Homestead Strike, I read Mad Cowboy, about the cattle rancher who wouldn’t eat beef, which was popular at the time.

I was shown to my desk and told someone would come around to train me—but nobody ever came.

I wanted to understand history and why things were the way they were. I didn’t have much support growing up. My father has been physically disabled since I was 5 years old, and my mom was taking care of him all the time, so she was checked out. They sent me to live with my grandma, but she didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t know how to be a person in the world, and my immediate environment was so baffling that I wanted to understand how and why this whole apparatus exists. What are all these people even doing? I thought if I could learn about the events of 100 years ago, I could trace the points better. Other times I would write in my journal, jotting down ideas for bumper stickers and doodling.

This was my first time working a job that wasn’t blue collar, so I didn’t know what to make of it. I met some people in Portland with similar jobs and I asked them, “Is this normal? Do people in Portland go to the office and not have any work to do?” They told me it’s not as hard as working in a restaurant, but that there’s usually something to do. I figured maybe the company just hadn’t gotten to me yet, and I’d get started at some point.

After a month, my manager finally comes by my desk. He says, “What have you been doing this whole time?”

I told him, “Whatever anybody asks me to do.” I knew how to give an evasive answer that wasn’t fundamentally dishonest.

My boss tells me I have to send a letter to the manager of every credit union that uses the company's debit cards. I sent out the letters like he asked, and he was impressed that I was able to figure out mail merge, which individualizes all the names and addresses on each letter, on my own. He was really impressed that I figured out how to insert my signature into the document as an image. The company had very low expectations. It was a few hours of work.

The next day my boss visits me again and gives me my official role in the company, which is identifying fraudulent debit accounts at credit unions. I thought, What a fun job. It wasn’t my dream job, but it seemed important and complicated.

I figured maybe the company just hadn’t gotten to me yet, and I’d get started at some point.

I had to cross-reference debit card records to make sure the accounts were legitimate. It was tedious, making sure the numbers matched, and the credit card company was working off of a very old database system. It felt like it was made in the eighties and never updated. Really buggy. I got a call from a credit union manager asking me to stop going through their records because it would crash their system for the entire day. I got another call from a different credit union manager. Same thing. Over and over. The credit union managers couldn’t do their job if I was doing my job. They pleaded with me to not do my job.

I told my boss about this, but he didn’t have much time for me. After about a month of complaints and no one checking in on my work, I stopped doing it. There was never a follow-up visit to my desk.

My boss let me come in at 10 a.m., thinking I would work until 6 p.m., but I’d leave before that. There were no security cameras; there was no way of knowing how late I was there. There was one day I spent probably eight hours on the phone, catching up with old friends, and the next day I got a note that read, “Please don’t take personal calls at work.” I wore a T-shirt to work one day and got a note saying that wasn’t even appropriate for Casual Fridays.

Management must have known I wasn’t doing any work, but those were my only reprimands. No one even talked to me. I would awkwardly say hi to the person working security at the main entrance and that would be the extent of my socializing at work. I didn’t have a conversation that was longer than a single sentence with anybody. I never made a friend there. I would see other people playing Solitaire on their computer. Does anybody do any work here?

I couldn’t even enjoy it. I was living in fear, wondering what the legal ramifications are of getting paid for no work.

I knew I was different from the people I worked with, that I didn’t want the lives they had, so I decided to use the situation to pursue my interests in earnest. I had a computer (which was rare back then), a printer, a copy machine and a telephone, and I put those resources to use. I met a lot of writers through the punk scene and I used the free time to start making zines from my desk. I started taking it really seriously. I made a paginated catalog and then paperback books. I decided that’s what I wanted to do with my life and started telling people I had a publishing company.

The publishing company took off, and in the summer of 2000, I organized a book tour for some of my authors. I had been at the job for two years and for the first time, I asked for some time off. My request was denied. My boss told me, “We need you at work.” I think it was a compliance job and the credit card company needed to have the position filled.

So I said, “I quit.”

My boss said, “You did a really great job. Let us know when you’re ready to come back.”

I still have my publishing business. We have thirty-four employees, and being the forgotten employee was the impetus for it.

Whenever I tell people about the job, they joke and ask, “Are they hiring?” I tell them you don’t want that job.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pr%2FQrqCrnV6YvK57y6Kdnqukrrmme8BtbG1paGmBc3vFqKmgp6Spsq95xKanpaepmrJuv9Oio6VloJa2pXs%3D