Language barriers make checkout interesting, and dealing with foreign coins can make it worse.

This cashier speaks just enough German to help.

Then fifty øre causes total confusion.

See how one tiny coin saves the transaction.

Øre, what’s that?

I worked summers in a grocery store in The Middle of Nowhere, Norway.

There were lots of mountains, fjords and a salmon river, so naturally we had a lot of German camping tourists.

We usually managed to understand what they wanted, but they didn’t always understand what we were trying to tell them…

Still, she managed.

One day when I was working the register, a German couple came through my line.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries and they were impressed by my rusty high school German, so everything went smoothly until it was time for them to pay for their groceries.

This happened when Norway still used øre, which is the equivalent of cents/pennies and the couples’ total was 245 kroner and 50 øre.

So in my best German I said:

Zweihundertfünfundvierzig punkt fünfzig, bitte.

Well, that was a mouthful.

And of course the German couple happily handed me 245 kroner and looked at me expectantly.

As my German does not extend very far outside of pleasantries and numbers, I tried with:

You’re missing fünfzig øre.

Something got lost in translation.

The German couple exchanged a look of puzzlement and then looked back to me.

Sensing I was not getting anywhere with trying to explain the situation, I tried pointing to where the register shows the price, tapping the part that shows .50 and saying:

Punkt fünfzig.

It didn’t help. But she needed to communicate with them.

The German couple just looked even more lost.

As my approach so far had got us nowhere and there was a line forming, I began looking for alternatives.

We had a little box behind the register where we kept change people had left or dropped, but of course there were no 50 øre coins there that I could show the German couple.

Maybe the solution could be simpler than she had imagined.

My next strategy was then trying to describe the 50 øre coin to the German couple.

As it looked completely different from all the other coins, it’s easy to find when you know what you’re looking for.

The 50 øre coin was much smaller and made of copper, so it had a brown colour none of the other coins had. I hesitantly said:

Das… kleine… braun… coin?

That did the trick.

The man in the couple lit up, started rummaging through his wallet and suddenly exclaimed:

A-ha!

In his hand was a 50 øre coin, which he held out to me with the biggest grin on his face.

I nodded excitedly and he handed it to me.

Their transaction finally completed, I handed them their receipt and bid them Auf Wiedersehen.

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Fantastisch!

Let’s see what Reddit had to say about this.

A reader shares a similar experience.

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Nah. You’re good.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a restaurant employee who decided to put the staff over customers despite the official policy.

Another reader chimes in.

A German couple understood the cashier perfectly until the final 50 øre left them completely puzzled.

After pointing, translating, and improvising a description, OP finally helped them find the correct little brown coin.

Sometimes international diplomacy is just one tiny coin away.