Paid for Doing Nothing: Suspended Office Assistant Kept Getting Checks for 12 Years

Talk about a cushy job! For the last 12 years, a Virginia woman hasn't set foot in her office and has done zero work, yet she's been collecting an annual salary that has totaled more than $300,000. Recently, the bookkeeping mistake was discovered and her payments were discontinued, but now she's filing for wrongful termination and unemployment benefits!
It all started more than a dozen years ago, when Jill McGlone, who had been working as an office assistant for the Norfolk Community Services Board, was suspended for "revealing confidential medical information." Apparently, authorities forgot to suspend her pay, however, and the checks, which totaled about $26,000 per year, kept going out, according to Washington, D.C., news site TBD.
Granted, $26,000 per year is not an exorbitant salary, but considering what she was and wasn't doing to earn it, it's a bit more than generous, really. There's no word on whether or not she received health insurance, but there were definitely retirement savings involved as well, and McGlone is upset that she's been unable to access them since she was terminated.
Her situation was only uncovered recently, when a new supervisor, Maureen Womack, came in to take the reigns of Norfolk CSB. She went over the budget, discovered the human resource department's mistake, and fired McGlone with alacrity.
But McGlone, silent for 12 years, has found her voice at last. TBD reports that, in a letter to the city manager of Norfolk, she wrote, "The denial of my unemployment benefits, the wrongful termination of my employment, and the refusal to allow me to draw down the money in my retirement are issues needed for discussion."

Then she claimed that she was discriminated against, although it's unclear how that is possible when no one even saw her, and most didn't even know she existed. She also claimed that her civil rights were violated, and you can't help but wonder where she gets her inalienable rights to sit at home on the couch while the rest of us go to work. Then there's also the claim that she and her family have "suffered greatly." Just think of all the inconvenience caused by the gravy train no longer stopping at her door.

It's surprising that there's a lawyer out there who would take her case or even advise her, but there's always the chance that she spent those years at home getting a law degree online, preparing for a day such as this.
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By Lisa Johnson Mandell
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