Leslie Thomas's novel "Orange Wednesday" revolves round a soldier who is the sole nominal representative of the occupying British army in a small village in Germany. Over several years the army system has lost track of him - except that he still gets paid and his supplies arrive regularly.
A similar thing happened to me leading up to my retirement after several middle management re-organisations. One day someone with an administrative role rang up to ask which project I was working on. This was a puzzle as I was still doing the same company-wide support job as I had for many years. I later heard that a senior manager in my nominal department eventually said "I thought he had left already!". Left hand - right hand.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
