A 19-year-old managed to live in the Silicon Valley offices of internet service provider AOL for two whole months without ever being noticed. Some man…
We’d all love to get a few weeks free rent, but how does two whole months sound? Pretty damn good we think you’ll agree. Well to get your free accommodation, apparently all you have to do is take a class trip to the Silicon Valley offices of internet giant AOL, and then stay there when your class leaves.
That’s exactly what Eric Simons did when he realised that his security card still worked after his educational trip was over. We’re sure that AOL are wise to the trick by now, but it’s worth a shot.
The 19-year-old ‘technology entrepreneur’ slept on sofas, ate free in the cafeteria and even used the company gym on a daily basis, even though he wasn’t an employee at all.
Simons, from Chicago, used his time in AOL to start up his own company that offers teachers the chance to share their lesson plans.
Seeing as Simons was always in the office first and the last person to leave, everyone else in the company assumed he was just an eager young mind looking to learn as much as he could. He was, however, the most productive freeloader on the face of the planet.
Simons told the technology website CNET: “There were so many people going in and out each day. They’d say, ‘Oh, he just works, here, he’s working late every night. Wow, what a hard worker.'”
While the lads over at AOL said: “It was always our intention to facilitate entrepreneurialism in the Palo Alto office – we just didn’t expect it to work so well.”
