How often do you use coins when making purchases? In South Korea, 77% of people prefer to pay with a card, and in the United Kingdom, 70% of people would rather tap or swipe than rummage through their wallets. Nowadays, it’s just more convenient for most people to not have to carry around cash and coins. But as one former grocery store employee in Sweden learned the hard way, some customers will demand that their cash preference is accommodated to the very last cent.

The former grocery store worker shared the story of how they had to deal with an obnoxious Karen during one of their shifts several years ago on the Malicious Compliance subreddit. Below, you can read the full story, as well as some of the replies it received, and consider how you would have responded in that situation. We would love to hear your thoughts on the encounter down below, and if you’re ever had to deal with a similarly frustrating customer, feel free to share your personal stories as well. Then, if you’re looking to read another Bored Panda article calling out a Karen, look no further than right here.  

This former grocery store employee shared how they once maliciously complied to a Karen’s demand for exact change at work

Image credits: Timur Weber (not the actual photo)

Image credits: gmahender(not the actual photo)

The worker explained that a trip to the safe to get more coins was no simple task

Finally, the woman received her change, but she still wasn’t satisfied

Image credits: Ketut Subiyanto (not the actual photo)

Image credits: [deleted]

Cash is dying out in many parts of the world, but particularly in Sweden, the nation has transitioned to an almost exclusively card-using society. I used to live in Sweden, and I can vouch for the fact that I did not need to take out cash once in the entire time I lived there. The few times I had cash, after being reimbursed for something from a friend, I had a hard time finding anywhere to spend it. Many places won’t even accept cash or coins. And when I did pay with bills at the grocery store, I almost never received exact change back. I would always be given about 5kr more than I was supposed to receive, likely because the machines did not have 1kr coins in them.

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So while I can understand that the woman in this story wanted to pay for her stamp with a coin, she should have also understood that coins are becoming a thing of the past in her country. It is not surprising at all that the register did not have any 1kr coins at the moment, and there is no reason to berate an employee for that. I wonder how many times this Karen even received extra change back as well…

Between 2010 and 2020, the amount of Swedes who use cash has fallen from 39% to a measly 9%. This particular story from Reddit did happen about 5 years ago, but Sweden was already well on its way to eliminating cash usage at that point. Most Swedes use technology such as Swish, an app-based payment method, and Mobile BankID, a way to log into and access their bank accounts via their phones, much more frequently than they do cash. 

It’s important not to completely eliminate cash yet, as many older citizens may not be technologically savvy enough to purchase bus tickets and make payments through smart phones and people living in poverty might not always have access to this technology, but citizens who do prefer cash need to understand the direction in which society is going. It does not make sense for grocery store workers to keep an endless supply of 1kr coins in the register if only a few out of every 100 customers will pay with cash. Perhaps the worker in this situation could have just given the woman a 2kr coin as change and just called it even if she had been nicer, but the Karen demanded exact change. So she got it.

We would love to hear your thoughts on this situation down below. Would you have taken a journey to the safe to get this woman her precious 1kr coin? Thankfully, she said she would never return to the story again, so hopefully this was her last time causing a scene there. Maybe she even learned a lesson from the whole experience, and it was her last time throwing a fit anywhere. We can only hope!          

Readers applauded the employee in the replies, noting that it would be a victory if the Karen never came back

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