ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia man said his former employer owed him a pretty penny, $915 to be exact, after leaving his job in November.
But Andreas Flaten said he was shocked to see his final payment: 90,000 oil or grease-covered pennies, at the end of his driveway earlier this month, news outlets reported. Atop the pile was an envelope with Flaten’s final paystub and an explicit parting message.
“This is a childish thing to do,” Flaten said.
Flaten said he left his job at Peachtree City’s A OK Walker Autoworks in November. He said he was owed the final check and had difficulty getting it, even turning to the Georgia Department of Labor to receive help.
In mid-March, Flaten said as he left his house with his girlfriend he noticed the pile at the end of his driveway. He said the pennies were covered with some sort of oily substance.
Now his nightly routine consists of cleaning the pennies so he can cash them in. He said it took him about an hour and a half to clean off several hundred.
“I think that’s going to be a lot of work for money I’ve already worked for,” he said. “It’s definitely not fair at all.”
The owner of the shop, Miles Walker, spoke with WGCL-TV briefly, stating he didn’t know if he did or didn’t drop the pennies off at Flaten’s house.
“I don’t really remember,” Walker told the TV station. “It doesn’t matter. He got paid. That’s all that matters.”
Walker went on to call Flaten a “weenie.”
Flaten’s girlfriend, Olivia Oxley, said she hopes her boyfriend’s story sheds light on how people “are treated so poorly by their employers.”
She said the pair have stopped being angry and are looking at the petty act in a positive light.
“With that many pennies, we’re bound to find a few treasures. I’ve already found one from 1937,” Oxley said. “After the first shovel full, all we could do was laugh because this poor miserable man took so much time to be vindictive and cruel. We absolutely refused to let him ruin a single moment of ours.”