Desperate': Man Saws Off Foot to Avoid Work...And Continue Unemployment Benefits

School children can come up with the most elaborate schemes to get themselves out of class, even psyching themselves up so much that they really do end up being sick. But what of adults simply not wanting to go to work? One Austrian man must have thought being adult required even more drastic measures than faking a stomach ache. So, he cut off his own foot.

This is not a joke. An Austrian man really sawed off his own foot yesterday, according to Reuters, to avoid going back to work when a labor office official was set to check in on his health. Here are some more details:

Hours before an appointment on Monday for the labor office to check on his health, the 56-year-old man held his left leg against an electric saw in his home workshop and severed his foot just above the ankle, Austrian broadcaster ORF reported.

Bleeding profusely, the man from the province of Styria then threw the foot into an oven, hobbled to his garage and called an ambulance. An emergency operation was unable to reattach the foot, ORF said.

According to Metro, the local police chief Franz Fasching said the man was still conscious when help arrived on the scene, although he had lost a lot of blood. Fasching said the foot was too badly burned from being in the oven to be salvageable.

ORF called it a "desperate" act of a man wishing to continue receiving unemployment benefits. The man will not be able to claim disability benefits after this gruesome act, the Minister for Social Affairs Rudolf Hundstorfer said, but should he file for mental disabilities that situation could change.

[H/T Gizmodo]