From About.com: Urban Legends by David Emery:
Netlore Archive: The Bristol Zoo Parking Attendant
Email tale about a ‘very pleasant attendant’ who, for 25 years running, showed up every day at Bristol Zoo and collected parking fees from visitors, then one day simply disappeared with all the cash. Turns out no one had ever officially hired a car park attendant for the zoo. The man now lives in a villa in Spain.
Description: Email joke / Urban legend
Circulating since: April 2007
Status: False
Email example contributed by Kenneth D., July 6, 2009:
Fw: A well-planned retirement
From The London Times:
Outside the Bristol Zoo, in England, there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 coaches, or buses.
It was manned by a very pleasant attendant with a ticket machine charging cars 1 pound (about $1.40) and coaches 5 (about $7).
This parking attendant worked there solid for all of 25 years. Then, one day, he just didn’t turn up for work.
“Oh well”, said Bristol Zoo Management – “we’d better phone up the City Council and get them to send a new parking attendant…”
“Err … no”, said the Council, “that parking lot is your responsibility.”
“Err … no”, said Bristol Zoo Management, “the attendant was employed by the City Council, wasn’t he?”
“Err … NO!” insisted the Council.
Sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain, is a bloke who had been taking the parking lot fees, estimated at 400 pounds (about $560) per day at Bristol Zoo for the last 25 years. Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over 3.6 million pounds ($7 million).
And no one even knows his name.
Analysis: If ever there was a story too good to be true, this is it. Not only have reporters at the Bristol Evening Post concluded the tale of the phantom car park attendant is “nothing more than an urban myth,” they’ve also pinned down its point of origin: the Bristol Evening Post!
“A version of the story did appear in the Evening Post two years ago,” explains an article in the June 13, 2009 edition of the paper, “in a feature on urban myths published to coincide with April Fools’ Day.”
So it’s a two-year-old April Fools prank gone viral, and nothing more. For the record, the article also states that Bristol Zoo has several car parks “” none of which are open to coaches “” with several duly-hired attendants on duty.
photo: Vapeblog