Russian Men Use A Bathtub Full Of Coins To Buy An iPhone To Send A Message About ‘Chutta’

Change (or as we love it call it, chutta) has either of the two reactions here in India. When we give change to a shopkeeper, they’ll say “chutte nahi lete” (which means we don’t take change). And when we need change, they’ll say “chutte nahi hai, toffee le lo” (we don’t have change, take the toffee instead).

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This attitude towards change has become so obnoxious that people are starting to disregard it as a form of currency. And going by the reaction of some Russian men, it turns out that this is not a problem exclusive to India.

Recently, a bunch of pranksters from Russia decided to buy the Apple iPhone XS with just change. And they collected that change in a bathtub and took to their nearest Apple store.

The whole process was posted by Russian blogger Svyatoslav Kovalenko. According to NDTV, he dumped 100,000 Russian roubles in a bathtub (which is equivalent to Rs. 1,08,000). When it was filled to the brim, the bathtub weighed around 350 kgs, which was carried by almost six people, to an Apple store in a mall in Moscow.

Don’t believe me? Watch the entire video here:

Since it’s not everyday that someone takes a bathtub full of coins to a mall, the pranksters did meet with some resistance. However, as seen in a picture on Facebook, the Apple store finally did agree to take all that change.

Что такое #клиентоориентированность ? Это когда покупатель решил хайпануть и принес ванну мелочи для покупки айфона, а…

Posted by Ludmila Semushina on Monday, November 12, 2018

Reportedly, it took the store employees two hours to go through all the coins. But at the end of the day, Kovalenko successfully walked away with the 265 GB version of the iPhone XS.

However, why go to this extent to buy an iPhone? They could’ve just used cash or bought it off the internet without using any sort of physical currency, right? Well, according to ABC News, Kovalenko wanted to make a point. He said,

“We decided to do a very global experiment and show who refuses to accept change. The more people who watch the video, the more people will understand that change, whether it’s a kopek, whether’s it 10 kopeks, it is also currency.”

Through this experiment, Kovalenko wanted to react to Russian stores’ penchant for refusing to serve customers who didn’t have change. And since this has gone viral, he thinks it’ll affect people’s attitude towards the coin form of currency.

Realistically speaking, nobody wants to deal in coins, especially during the era of digital transactions. It’s heavy, it clinks and is a lot of hassle. But, for some reason, the government bodies don’t want to retire it. Let’s hope Kovalenko’s message reaches them and urges them to make some change.

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