Having a great boss can make a crappy job more tolerable. But, it also works the other way — having a crappy boss can make a great job unbearable. One Georgia resident experienced the latter when he quit his job.
Andreas Flaten resigned from his position of year at Walker Luxury Autoworks located in Peachtree City in November 2020. He did it using career etiquette, turning in a two-weeks notice explaining his reasons for the resignation. Flaten’s reason for leaving was due to a toxic environment, you know, those environments where people are focused on everything but the work and even have time to make your life a living hell? His former boss Miles Walker was pretty upset with Flaten’s decision.
“He gets up, puts his hands on his head, walks out the door and disappears for like an hour,” Flaten said.
Upon Flaten’s departure, he was expecting to receive his final check of $915 at the top of 2021, according to what Walker told him. Yet, it wasn’t until March when Flaten would receive his final payout, but it wasn’t in the form of payment as expected. After Flaten filed a claim with the Georgia’s Department of Labor, the petty boss allegedly dumped 504-pounds of greasy pennies, equaling to 91,515 pennies, in front of Flaten’s house. To add a cherry on the top, a note saying “F–k you” was left on top of the pennies. Nothing like a toxic boss or co-worker that uses passive aggressive ways to illegally retaliate against harassed employees.
“I have nowhere to put them. I had no idea what I was going to do like how do I get money from pennies?” Flaten said.
Flaten cleaned every single oiled down penny and put it in a new wheelbarrow, but the heaviness of the pennies broke one of the wheels. The ordeal was posted on Instagram and soon would go viral, reaching many local news stations. When Walker was asked why was the payment delivered in pennies, he responded that he couldn’t recall dumping the pennies at Flaten’s house. Luckily for Flaten, coin exchange company Coinstar heard about the story and offered to exchange the coins for Flaten.
“When we heard about Mr. Flaten’s penny problem, we were happy to offer our assistance,” said Jim Gaherity, CEO of Coinstar. “Coinstar has been in the coin business for 30 years and we process approximately 41 billion coins annually – so picking up 91,000 pennies was all in a day’s work.”
In addition to exchanging the coins, Coinstar offered to donate $1,000 to two of Flaten’s charity choices. The donations eventually went to two animal shelters, TLC Pet Rescue and Royal Animal Refuge, where Flaten says the shelters saved both his dog and his mother’s dog.
“I was spending an hour or two a night trying to clean the pennies and probably only cleaned off about $5 worth,” Flaten said, according to the press release. “I was so relieved and grateful.”
Photo Courtesy of Olivia Oxley via AP
