Electrician Turns Chip Bag Into Faraday Cage So He Could Golf on the Clock

He fought the system, and the system won.

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Tom Colella gets bonus points for ingenuity, at least.

Colella, an electrician from Australia, wanted to get away from work and hit the links. Just one problem: The GPS-equipped, company-mandated device he was supposed to carry with him during business hours, which would tattle on his whereabouts. Not to be denied, Colella put his electrician know-how to work by turning a bag of chips into a makeshift Faraday cage.

A Faraday cage, named after the 19th century electromagnetism pioneer Michael Faraday, blocks electromagnetic waves. There's one around your microwave, for example. Colella figured keeping his GPS device inside a foil enclosure would scramble the signals and keep the boss from tracking him.

Well, it didn't last. Colella was found out when somebody reported him for allegedly golfing when he should've been working, and was fired. His case went to the Fair Work Commission, an organization that settles Australian workplace disputes. In his decision finding that Colella had been justly terminated, Fair Work Commissioner Bernie Riordan wrote:

"I can find no plausible explanation why Mr Colella would create a faraday cage around his PDA, except to obstruct the GPS collecting capacity of the device. Mr Colella appears to have been deliberately mischievous in acting in this manner."

Fear not for Colella, who is now putting his particular set of skills to work as an Uber driver.

Source: NPR

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