This happened to someone I knew back in 2014 or so. We were hired together at C** Consulting and I was immediately shipped off to Dallas to help with an eCommerce program at a famous Watch & Accessory brand. My buddy from orientation in NJ kept in touch and was jealous I was on a project so quickly. He went back to his home and went into the C** office dutifully for the first month and just did training, enablement and finally surfed the web and got bored.
It seems his manager LEFT C** right as he joined. The ORG had not changed to reflect this status and my friend now reported to a ghost. He joked with me about it but was also baffled that such a large company could let this happen. His humor turned dark and he started to stay at home - do nothing - and collect his check.
Last I heard he applied to Ac** Consulting - got a role and started up with them... collecting two checks for a while until C** figured out what was up and reassigned him - he put in his 2 weeks notice at that time. :shrug emoji: True story.
My dad had a friend who did similar at an even larger company. The way the story was passed down to me, his whole floor was laid off while he was on some sort of leave/vacation and so the paperwork didn't get filed right, leaving him disconnected from the organizational tree but still in payroll. It's amazing the mistakes bureaucracy can make.
If I hadn't met the guy and known he worked for this company, I would have had an angry phone call home after finally getting to see Office Space. The big difference though is Milton kept himself visible because he was unaware (IIRC) and this guy came in and hid every day because he figured out what happened and knew how fragile a situation it was.
There's a whole subreddit dedicated to doing this, see /r/overemployed. There's a guy on there claiming to be employed to the tune of 5+ FTE's or something, I haven't checked in a while.
It seems his manager LEFT C** right as he joined. The ORG had not changed to reflect this status and my friend now reported to a ghost. He joked with me about it but was also baffled that such a large company could let this happen. His humor turned dark and he started to stay at home - do nothing - and collect his check.
Last I heard he applied to Ac** Consulting - got a role and started up with them... collecting two checks for a while until C** figured out what was up and reassigned him - he put in his 2 weeks notice at that time. :shrug emoji: True story.