A bar owner in Georgia gave her unemployed staff members a stimulus directly from the walls of their workplace.

The Sand Bar in Tybee Island, Georgia, was forced to close its doors because of the coronavirus pandemic like many other restaurants in the state. But the bar’s tradition of customers stapling dollar bills to the walls gave owner Jennifer Knox a unique idea.

“We were sitting there, doors locked, and I’m like, 'Oh my gosh. There's money on the walls, and we have time on our hands,’” Knox told CNN. “We gotta get this money down.”

Knox, who has owned the bar for six years after working as a bartender there for seven years, assembled a team of five volunteers who began delicately peeling the bills from the walls. The tedious process took more than three days and involved carefully removing the staples, sometimes a dozen, from the currency.

Once the bills were removed, it took another week and a half to clean and count the makeshift wallpaper. In all, $3,714 was pulled from the walls, but when customers began to hear about Knox’s idea, some chipped in extra funds, bringing the grand total to $4,104.

Knox ended up donating $600 to two musicians and four bartenders. She said she is still collecting donations from those on Tybee Island who want to give.

“We all look out for each other,” she explained. “We are all in this together.”

