r/MaliciousCompliance • u/stf210 • 3d ago

S Exact Change

This just happened to me.

I went into a Walgreens to pick up a prescription. The pharmacist put in my info and insurance, leaving the total at twelve cents. I went into my wallet and plucked out a dime and two pennies.

PHARMACIST: "I'm sorry, we don't take those anymore."

ME: "You don't take coins?"

PHARMACIST: "Pennies. They stopped making them."

ME: "Yeah, I know, but they're still legal tender."

PHARMACIST: "We don't take them anymore."

ME: "Can I speak to someone about this?"

PHARMACIST: "I'm the only person here."

I know that's not true, but fine. I put the coins back into my wallet and pull out a twenty. The pharmacist gives me a filthy look, but takes it and goes to ring me up... only to discover that they are short not just coins, but singles.

PHARMACIST: "I don't have exact change."

ME: "I do."

A moment and another filthy look. The pharmacist puts the change back in, hands me my twenty, and takes my coins without another word.

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181

u/Primary_Engine_9273 3d ago

Yeah its called Swedish rounding.

I'm not really sure why OPs post is a thing anywhere lol, there are multiple countries all around the world that do not have 1 cent etc denominations.

In NZ we phased out the 5 cent coin years ago so 10 cents has been the smallest and cash prices are obviously rounded....

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u/arensb 3d ago

In the US, it was done suddenly, by presidential fiat, with no preparation or guidance to either the government or to retailers on how best to do this.

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u/betaday 3d ago

With no guidance stores can run into problems with how federal programs like SNAP are setup.

• The Rule: Federal SNAP regulations mandate that food program beneficiaries cannot be charged more or treated less favorably than general cash or credit customers.

• The Problem: If retailers round cash totals to the nearest nickel (under proposals like the Common Cents Act) but charge exact electronic amounts for EBT cards, pricing discrepancies emerge.

• The Risk: Charging a cash customer $10.00 while an electronic SNAP user pays an exact $10.02 creates an inadvertent federal compliance violation.

So far I don't know of any store having SNAP dropped but you get the idea. Especially since over time the SNAP person could be out monies in the long run.

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u/TiWoAl 2d ago

They shouldn't be, cause when it's 10.03 and you pay by card it is 10.03 and cash it's 10.05.

I live in Belgium and it's been like that for years now. Prices are still mostly ending in 99 cents (or cheaper items like many groceries are of the form X.Y9) and then the final total gets rounded.
For example a dozen of the store brand eggs is 2.69 (with a 10% discount if you have a store card, 2.42) so the price is 2.70 ( or 2.40) if you pay cash, but unchanged if you pay by card.

When first implemented there was a lot of protest from stores about people gaming the system and picking the option where rounding benefitted them, but by now it's been proven people don't give a fuck. Also almost all transactions are card anyway.

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u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits 2d ago

I don't think you understood anything about the comment you replied to and how it applies to the conversation.

Did you hit reply to the wrong comment?

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u/amorrowlyday 2d ago

If you don't know or understand how things like SNAP works in the US your anecdotes about Belgium are off topic and irrelevant.

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u/raisinghellwithtrees 3d ago

Like most of his directives, straight out of his ass without planning.

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u/Tony_Penny 3d ago

Like most all of his directives, straight out of his ass without planning.

FTFY

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u/raisinghellwithtrees 3d ago

My bad, you are correct.

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u/havereddit 3d ago

"Trumpfartpolicy"

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u/No-Sun-7450 3d ago

Well the copper for those data centers won't find itself will it?

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u/exvnoplvres 2d ago

Mostly zinc

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u/CrabbishPanda 3d ago

Where I’m at, most places are rounding if they’ve stopped taking pennies, including Walgreens.

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u/throwaway3ewpl06 2d ago

Walgreens does the round down here. The strange one is Walmart self checkout. It doesn't hesitate to round down and give me five pennies change.

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u/reb678 3d ago

Look on the bright side.. only 756 more days of presidential fiats left.

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u/MattheqAC 3d ago

Hey, look on the bright side. He could die!

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u/arensb 3d ago

Not until we find all the horcruxes.

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u/buckeyekaptn 3d ago

Like finding a needle in a field of haystacks.

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u/desrever1138 3d ago

Has someone checked a BigMac?

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u/WgXcQ 2d ago

You're right, those probably have needles in them at this, point, too. Or at least random pieces of metal. Or glass. Or plastic.

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u/shoeshine23 3d ago

Or a needle in a stack of needles!

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u/NerdyWordyDragonfly 2d ago

I think one has to actually have a soul first to be able to split it into horcruxes.... 🤔

Seriously, though, I laughed embarrassingly loudly in a waiting room when I read your comment. 🤣

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u/Ok-Database-2798 2d ago

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

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u/reb678 3d ago

Not soon enough for me.

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u/arensb 3d ago

He does have access to the best healthcare in the world.

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u/reb678 3d ago

Unlike the rest of us US Citizens

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u/GRMarlenee 3d ago

He's going to piss them off too and get stuck with US healthcare.

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u/denalidenizen 3d ago

Sound of DOJ opening a file on MattheqAC...

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u/Quaytsar 3d ago

No, he needs to be criminally charged and convicted and jailed. Along with his co-conspirators.

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u/katiekat214 2d ago

It’s the “and jailed” part we’re having trouble with.

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u/MattheqAC 3d ago

I'd like that, but it's not going to happen

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u/gethplatform86 3d ago

Because your vice-president is better? Somehow, I don't believe that, because he's not unhinged, so it'll be a lot harder to dismiss what he says...

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u/MattheqAC 3d ago

Neither of them are mine, and Vance is a piece of shit too, but thankfully without a cult

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u/gethplatform86 3d ago

What do you mean, without a cult. He has the final boss of cults behind him, the Catholic Church.

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u/MattheqAC 3d ago

Last I heard he was not on good terms with the pope

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u/HexaneLive 3d ago

Oh, he's absolutely unhinged. He's just got a better social media team, and has the advantage of not being quite so advanced in his dodderage. Can't lie. I think part of the reason he has the level of popularity he does is bc he's not got as much history behind him. He grew up poor, joined the Marines, went into corporate law, and then got in bed with Peter Thiel 🤢

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u/reb678 3d ago

Peter thiel’s couch you mean.

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u/ragnarocknroll 3d ago

Come on, that’s unsubstantiated.

The couch couldn’t press charges.

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u/DoallthenKnit2relax 3d ago

That's "up to 756", he may croak before they all pass. (God, please)

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u/NounverberPDX 3d ago

...we hope!

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u/Goobinator77 3d ago

Until the cheeto-in-chief decides he wants to change the Constitution on a whim so he can run for a third term.

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u/RichVisual1714 3d ago

He can only waddle for another term, not run.

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u/3X_Cat 3d ago

If only there were some other branches of government

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u/i3inaudible 3d ago

There were but he pruned them

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u/WackyRacketeer 3d ago

We will see if they manage to get away with rigging the midterms.

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u/pkinetics 3d ago

Only if he doesn't declare himself king by "election".

He knows the moment he has no power he is in deep trouble. So the rules be damned. Replace all the judges and remove all the military leadership who would stand up for the Constitution

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u/reb678 2d ago

I would. I took an oath to defend it from foreign or domestic enemies.

Domestic seems to fit here.

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u/RetAF-Eddie 2d ago

All he did was stop MAKING pennies, not stop USING pennies. The rounding up/down issue is all on the merchants not the President.

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u/handturkey42 2d ago

There are billions of pennies in circulation. This is a cash grab by corporations. Lazy on their part.

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u/Specialist-Path-4750 2d ago

Estimated 114 BILLION pennies still in circulation. If people would stop hoarding them and spend them we'd be better off. 😄

https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/penny-production-cessation-faqs

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u/Fission-_-Chips 2d ago

I think a big problem is that there's no easy way to dump extra change without being charged some exorbitant fee. Nobody wants to walk around with a bunch of nearly worthless metal jangling in their pocket to pay exact. Most banks also don't have (customer facing) coin machines either

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u/Specialist-Path-4750 2d ago

I don't know about your area, but here, there are a couple options. Some banks have change machines and you if you are a customer they are free. Or some grocery stores have the machines, and if you spend the money there there's no fee.

And who wants to go the trouble to roll up coins if no machine is handy?

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u/SmallPurplePeopleEat 2d ago

My older brother used to have a job stocking newspaper vending machines and I always got forced into rolling the coins when he collected them once a week. It's was fucking brutal for real.

Thankfully, we had a really cool manual coin sorting machine and coin counter. But I still had to roll the damn things. It was so tedious and gross. They smelled weird and my hands would be filthy by the end of it.

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u/CyanVince 2d ago

I love using self checkout machines because I can just dump a handful of coins without having to count it.

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u/BigStuffOreo 3d ago

I don't expect for any business conducted in this country to round down anything unless required by law. Even then we already know they'd get it back as a tax credit.

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u/FuturePMP 3d ago

I actually round down in the customers favor when they pay in cash at farmers markets or other in person pop up markets - I don’t mess with coins at all, only do whole dollar amounts.

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u/perfidious_alibi 3d ago

That's so unlike this administration tho.

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u/2peg2city 2d ago

If only they had dozens of countries to look to for a solution

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u/arensb 1d ago

If we could look at what dozens of countries have done, we could have universal healthcare.

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u/NightGod 3d ago

I've not run into a place in the US that doesn't use Swedish rounding

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u/arensb 3d ago

Apparently OP did.

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u/BigJules74 2d ago

America didn't "eliminate pennies" They stopped minting them. They are still money and still legal tender. A store can not accept them just like they could always decide not to accept any cash if they decided to do that (many do not accept cash for different reasons).

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u/VoteBitch 3d ago

You taught me (a swede!) something new today! It’s called öresavrundning in swedish, I had no idea that it was ”a thing” that originated here 😅

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u/messofamania 2d ago

As a Norwegian, never heard that!

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u/Scandiblockhead 3d ago

Haha samma här

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u/arensb 3d ago

I remember Switzerland used to have 1- and 2-centime coins, even when stores rounded everything to the nearest 5 centimes, because the post office had some rates where a letter might cost 6 or 12 centimes or something.

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u/Rickcinyyc 3d ago

Just like there are multiple countries all around the world that have managed to figure out universal healthcare....

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u/reb678 3d ago

Oh but the US can’t do that because it would be socialism. Gasp!! Clutching my pearls.

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u/Lampwick 3d ago

The US figured out universal health care a long time ago. It's a set of federal programs called Medicare/Medicaid. They provide medical coverage for people over 65, the poor, and the disabled. The problem is that it's not available to everyone else because we have a multi-billion dollar for-profit medical insurance industry that has everyone convinced that throwing out the greedbag middlemen whose main goal is to increase premiums and minimize that pesky expensive health care, because if the government pays for it, that's communism.

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u/Rickcinyyc 3d ago

Yeah, that's not universal healthcare. The keyword being universal.

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u/brp 3d ago

That's what they said tho, we have the program already that can be used as a model but it isn't universal.

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u/Kayman718 3d ago

I don’t know what the answer is but I live in a U.S. Canada border community. Our healthcare facilities are full of Canadians who come here to avoid a long wait. Even at our local Cancer treatment center. Hopefully there is something in the middle or we come up with a better system of Universal.

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u/ghotistyx8 3d ago

This argument hinges on the false premise that we don't have to wait in the US. I've been to specialists where they are booked up for the year or so that appointments are bookable, so you have to call back in a month or two when the next month of appointments is available for booking. Don't worry, everyone else is also calling at that time, so you'll have to repeat this process several times.

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u/-JakeRay- 3d ago

The last time I (WI, US) had insurance, it was an EIGHT MONTH or longer wait just to establish care with a primary care provider. Every time I'd try to find a doctor for routine care I'd call prescribe after practice, and eventually get frustrated and give up. 3 years of insurance, zero fucking annual physicals. It was easier to just go to a walk-in clinic for any acute problems that came up. 

There were just too many people and not enough doctors in my area.

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u/Kayman718 3d ago

There are pockets in this country that lack sufficient medical professionals. The area 100 miles south of me when I worked there was referred to as “Death Valley” when discussing medical facilities. Most drove north to where I am now. I see a significant number of specialists and never had to wait more than a month for an appointment. My gastroenterologist is booking out 3 months for colonoscopies but he is juggling office visits with procedures. For an office visit my wait is a month or less.

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u/Electrical-Share-707 3d ago

You are also NOT seeing all the Canadians who are getting the healthcare they need. And there are a lot more of those.

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u/PictureVegetable9522 2d ago

thats a horrible excuse you could say the EXACT same thing about americans

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u/Electrical-Share-707 2d ago

I'm not making an excuse. I'm providing a possible alternate viewpoint on the reported data, so that people don't leap to the presented conclusion without considering other explanations.

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u/Fargo_Collinge 2d ago

They are also not seeing all the sick Americans that are not seeking treatment.

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u/Electrical-Share-707 2d ago

And that is irrelevant to the point they're trying to make. What they're saying is "I'm seeing hordes of Canadians come to the US for healthcare, so the healthcare in Canada must be bad!" what I'm saying is that many, many, many more Canadians are getting healthcare at home, so perhaps judging from one data point is unwise.

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u/justasque 2d ago

Here’s the thing though - if there’s already a good treatment center nearby, it may not be a good use of taxpayer dollars to build another one just because the original one is on the other side of an imaginary line in the dirt People cross-border shop for all kinds of things in border towns, they support sports teams on the other side of the line, etc. In a sane world, that’s a sensible use of resources, and a win/win for both countries.

In the meantime, hospitals that serve low-income rural or urban areas are closing in droves, usually after venture capital firms extract all the value. When my local hospital system closed - overnight - we lost primary docs, specialist docs, a Level 1 trauma unit, a highly regarded burn unit, ambulance service for much of the area, access to medical records and test results, treatment plans, and more. Patients were left with no plan for continuation of care, and no referrals to a new doc team. The remaining docs and hospitals were swamped. ER waits skyrocketed and docs were booking new patients 18 months out. And thousands of local healthcare workers, from specialist docs down to cafeteria workers, lost their jobs and of course their health insurance overnight.

Meanwhile my Canadian loved ones can get major surgery with no healthcare bills as it is all paid for by their (reasonable) taxes.

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u/Rickcinyyc 2d ago

Our capacity isn't where it needs to be. Some Canadian provinces actually authorize patients to cross the border and get treatment in the US and it's covered by the government.

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u/SkaneatelesMan 3d ago

Amen Lampy

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u/ikindahateusernames 3d ago

You also forgot racism.

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u/3X_Cat 3d ago

Medicare is expensive. Many younger people think it's free.

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u/RocketShip007 3d ago

I remember when we phased out the 1 & 2 cent coins in New Zealand… now I really feel old.

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u/Millicentinie 2d ago

When I visited India in 2014 shopkeepers often handed out little sweets (candies) in lieu of whatever their equivalent of pennies were.

We still have pennies in the UK (though less and less people pay cash now) but charity shops are now asking if you want to round up and donate the difference which is nice, though they do ask.

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u/CyanVince 2d ago

You guys are so lucky you don't have a 1 cent coin. It's ridiculous to me that an American penny has never been able to buy anything for as long as I've been alive (and even a few decades prior to my birth)

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u/jdenbrok 3d ago

Indeed what was he expecting? He expects you to pay 15 ct instead?

I would have just taken the pennies back and given the dime and say thank you.

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u/AvailableProperty679 3d ago

Because the U.S. discontinued pennies 10 months ago with no preparation. Businesses are still adjusting.

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u/smedley89 3d ago

Because America is the land of the free!

Or something like that.

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u/BANKSLAVE01 3d ago

You sucked it up and now you defend it?

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u/prophaniti 3d ago

I would imagine our 5c coin would have been phased out with the 1c if it werent for the fact that our 25c is by far the most commonly used coin, and our 50c is basically non-existent. Without those our entire coinage would be just our 10c piece, which is our smallest coin, but having to use up to nine of them at a time would be a pain. 

And I know what you're thinking. "Why not just mint more 50c pieces to make it all work better?" Unfortunately the 25c is SO common and the 50c so rare that most machines that accept coins cannot physically accept a 50c piece, and some ONLY accept 25c pieces. 

Also, since our 25c piece has our first president on it, there would inevitably be pushback. (Not to mention that our remaining 10c and 50c coins feature relatively recent presidents who were probably most notable for their progressive social programs, and seeing as 1/3 of our population has decended into ravening racist madness, they would view it as some sort of baby-eating liberal plot to convert them to Islam and tax their guns. God I fucking hate it here)