The last few years have been known as the Great Resignation, with a lot of workers for a lot of reasons choosing to part ways with their employers.
These hope to make more money elsewhere, or find a better work/life balance, or just change things up.
Leaving a job usually means wrapping things up with your soon to be ex-employer including getting a final paycheck.
Here’s the story of a guy who got a pretty unpleasant sendoff.
Andreas Flaten had been working for an auto shop in Georgia when, in November 2020, he decided to give his notice.
His final paycheck amounted to $915, or it would have if he’d received it.
But he didn’t get a paper check or even a direct deposit.
So he got in touch with the company to ask about his money.
In April 2021, he got a response: someone dropped by his driveway to leave 91,500 pennies covered in oil, and a pay stub that read “F____ you.”
It took Flaten and his girlfriend hours to clear the driveway of the coins, though the oil lingered.
An Atlanta-area TV station asked the former employer about this, and he said, “He got paid, that’s all that matters. He’s a f_____g weenie for even bringing it up.”
Or perhaps it wasn’t such a f_____g weenie move after all.
Long after the media attention died down and the oil-covered pennies had been cleaned and returned to the broader money supply, the US Department of Labor started investigating.
And in June 2023, a federal court in Georgia issued a judgment ordering the auto shop to pay over $39,000 to Flaten and several of his former coworkers.
This was partly for unpaid overtime and back wages, but also in part for what it called “harassment and intimidation in the workplace.”
Pretty sure the authorities would frown on anybody trying to pay those fines by dropping off millions of oil-covered pennies in the court’s driveway.
Picture it: Houston, March 2017. Authorities were marking evidence following a shooting.
And as a spokesperson for the Houston PD said, until the official forensics team arrives, officers mark what’s on the crime scene with whatever they have close by.
In this case, it was a set of little orange number signs from the fast food chain Whataburger.
Hungry now?
Boss Who Paid Worker’s Final Salary in Oily Pennies Ordered to Give Ex-Staffers More than $39,000 (People)
Why are Whataburger numbers being used as crime scene evidence markers? (Click2Houston)
Photo by slgckgc via Flickr/Creative Commons