ATLANTA (AP) – A Georgia man said his former employer owed him a penny, $ 915 to be exact, after he left work in November.
But Andreas Flaten said he was surprised to see his final payment – 90,000 cents covered in oil or grease at the end of his driveway earlier this month, media reported. At the top of the stack was an envelope with Flaten’s final payment and an explicit separation message.
“That’s a childish thing,” Flaten said.
Flaten said he left his job at A OK Walker Autoworks in Peachtree City in November. He said he was owed the final check and had difficulty getting it, he even went to the Georgia Department of Labor for help.
In mid-March, Flaten said that when he left home with his girlfriend, he noticed the pile at the end of his driveway. He said the pennies were covered with some kind of oily substance.
Now his nightly routine is to clean up the pennies so he can collect them. He said it took about an hour and a half to clean several hundred of them.
“I think that’s going to take a lot of work for money I’ve already worked on,” he said. “It’s definitely not fair at all.”
The owner of the store, Miles Walker, spoke briefly with WGCL-TV, stating that he did not know whether or not he left the money at Flaten’s house.
“I don’t really remember it,” Walker told the television station. “It doesn’t matter if they pay you, that’s all that matters.”
Walker went on to call Flaten “shit.”
Flaten’s girlfriend, Olivia Oxley, said she hopes her boyfriend’s story sheds light on how “people mistreat their employers.”
He said the couple has stopped getting angry and is watching the petty act in a positive light.
“With so many cents, we will surely find some treasures. I already found one from 1937, ”said Oxley. “After the first full shovel, all we could do was laugh because this miserable poor man took a long time to be vengeful and cruel. We absolutely refused to let it ruin our moment. “