A Spanish man has been handed a punishment fit for Sisyphus, the mythological Greek who was damned to roll a boulder up a hill for all of eternity.
Spain’s AUGC Guardia Civil (like Canada’s own RCMP) forced a man who threw a fridge off a cliff in the name of “recycling” to haul it back up the slope, step by agonizing step. He was also fined 45,000 euros ($66,900) for the incident and later fired from his job, according to local reports.
The police service posted video of the man’s initial stunt and his punishment last week.
In the first video, the man offers a few tongue-in-cheek comments before pitching the old fridge down the embankment.
“We’re going to recycle it!” he says in the video. “How many twists and turns has it done?”
A second video posted on Twitter shows the man and another person slowly dragging the fridge back up the hill.
A third video shows what appears to be the same man pitching an old washing machine into a ravine. It’s unclear if his punishment also included retrieving this second appliance.
The man, whose name is Mario, was fired from his job at an appliance store over the incident, according to the local Spanish newspaper Diario de Almeria. Police shared a link to the story on Tuesday.
The man said he’s been treated worse than “murderers, politicians or thieves,” and is now trying to lay low to avoid media attention.
“It was a mistake to throw both appliances,” he said.