Elon Musk is the richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of hundreds of billions, according to Forbes. However, for a brief moment, somebody else — practically a commoner — appeared richer than the tech entrepreneur due to a technical error on a gift card receipt at a coffee shop.
The curious case happened to Sophie Downing, a resident of Nottingham, when she went to buy coffee at a local café called 200 Degrees Coffee. What followed could only have brought a smile to Sophie’s face — though only briefly. The honest mistake was later rectified, and she took it in stride.
Misunderstanding at a coffee shop made Elon Musk the second-richest man for a brief moment
As Downing went to the coffee shop, intending only to buy a latte with her £10 gift card, she was handed a receipt showing a remaining balance of more than £63 quadrillion — a figure higher than the net worth of the Tesla CEO.
For a while, Downing enjoyed being the richest woman in the world on paper, but she was quickly brought back down to earth when the store clarified that the gift card number, rather than the gift card value, had been entered into the wrong part of the till.
She said she was greeted with confused looks from staff as she was handed the receipt, adding that she found it funny when she saw the balance minus the price of her drink.
“You don’t ever see anything like that happening, so I sent it to my partner, and he thought it was really funny as well,” Downing told the BBC.
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However, she didn’t plan to take advantage of the bizarre situation — though she joked that if she really had a £63 quadrillion gift card, she would have spent it at the supermarket.
“Due to a technical administrative error, the gift card number, rather than the gift card value, was entered into the wrong part of the till. As a result, the customer was generated a receipt which suggested they had a rather higher amount of money left on their gift card than they actually did,” a spokesperson for 200 Degrees said.
The spokesperson added that the correct receipt was later provided to the customer, reflecting the true value of the gift card.
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