EVERYBODY gets carded. WTF?

The BBQ Pit
1

Officially, I am a senior citizen. Sure, I could pass for 50. With dark glasses and a cap, 40. With dark glasses, a cap, and gloves, 30. Maybe. But the only way I’m going to pass for 20 is with dark glasses, a cap, gloves, a ski mask, full-body armour and an electronic voice translator.

So why can’t I buy a nice bottle of Merlot at the local supermarket, Pic-N-Save? Because I don’t have my driver’s license with me. They have a new sign that says EVERYONE gets carded regardless of age. WTF? Is this really necessary?

Personally I find this not only ridiculous but insulting. I am WAY past the age where it is flattering. And, since I don’t normally carry around an ID (in this small town, who needs it? I can cash checks anywhere without it and this town is utterly devoid of security checks, even at the courthouse) it is a nuisance to have to remember to take it with me to the store.

I can see the store covering their ass – no judgement calls needed, no worry about undercover agents. But, really! The clerk that served (or refused to serve) me has seen me shop there for at least 10 years. And I assure you I didn’t look 11 when I first met her. It’s not like I could suddenly become a state narc or something.

So is this a trend? Are other stores doing this, or is just our Pic-N-Nose?

2

It’s fucking ridiculous. Admittedly, i’m not quite as, ahem, senior as you, but i’m 35 and there’s no way in hell i could pass for less than 25.

Last year my partner (who’s a few years older then me) and i went to a local bar and both got turned away because we had no ID. The guy on the door was checking everyone, regardliess of age. Luckily the bar was only a few blocks from where she lived at the time, but it was a pain in the ass trudging through the snow to get ID when it was completely obvious to both the guys on the door that we were both well over 21.

3

Thanks, mhendo, for agreeing with me. I expected the first reply would not (Past Pit Experience, I guess). :slight_smile:

And it’s even funnier when I was 19. I made up a fake ID (the statute of limitations is up for that crime, right?), adding 2 years to my age, and it passed by numerous ID-checkers, including a cop (!) who stopped me for some traffic offense. Hey, you’re only young and foolish once. :rolleyes:

U.S. liquor laws are pretty ridiculous to begin with, at least in the states I know about. I remember some years ago, when I came here only for a few weeks in the summer, I ran across a neighbor in the supermarket. She had just arrived in town and was getting groceries to stock the cottage and prepare herself a late supper. I helped her pick out a bottle of wine for it, but the clerk wouldn’t sell it to her as the clock had slipped just past 9PM.

The thought of this nice, white-haired old lady, who rarely drinks much of anything stronger than weak Lipton tea, going out in the parking lot, getting rip-roaring drunk and running over a pedestrian on the way home was what the law must have had in mind. Never mind that, if she really needed a drink, she had 4 hours left in the day to go to one of the 15 bars on the block (this is Wisconsin, remember?) and hoist an unlimited number of boilermakers before staggering home.

And which would be worse? Heavy drinking at a bar, then driving home late, or sitting down to dinner in your own house with a glass of wine and a meal? According to the law, the latter is to be most feared. Apparently the law assumes that all beverages are immediately consumed upon leaving the checkout line.

Just preventing people from drinking isn’t the purpose of the law, either. For that, we need prohibition. The purpose must be just to make it difficult.

But just try to change the existing laws. What politician wants to be known as the one who loosened them up?

4

All of the following is IMO only.

The card everyone policy is easy to interpret and impossible to get wrong. It removes the need for the cashier to decide, “does this guy/gal look old enough? Do I need to be a dick and ask for ID?” It also removes the, “You didn’t card him! Why are you carding me?” problems.

I believe it derives from our one size fits all, take no prisoners idea of a legal system, but that’s a rant for some other time.

5

I vaguely recall a case, in the Southwest, I think, in which local police ran a sting operation on local convenience stores. Now, I understand sending in kids to try to buy beer and then busting the clerks who sell it to them . . . but these cops had the bright idea of disguising the minors to look older. Clothing, wigs, stage makeup, the works. The courts ruled it entrapment.

6

Look, kid, I don’t wanna have to say this again – no booze for you without an ID!!!

7

Just a question, but do you walk to the Pic-N-Save, or do you drive?

8

WaaaaaAAAAAAHHH!

No problem – the other supermarket sold me the exact same bottle for $1.50 less. I was actually glad the first one refused. Ironically, the clerk at the 2nd market wasn’t old enough to ring up the purchase and had to call for the manager.

The manager didn’t card me.

And we are such a big town that we have TWO ** !count em! ** TWO supermarkets.

9

Don’t know if this is applicable to the OP or not, but some bars and take out stores around here have card readers similar to those used for credit card purchases, and they read the encoded mag stripe on your operator’s license to determine legitimacy, as well as creating a paper trail to cover the business’ keyster. Without a license to swipe, no such verification.

10

I knew some smartass – oh, not you, Joe :wink: – would ask this.

I do not carry a wallet. Ever. My ID is in the car, since I never need it anyplace else. Could I have walked out to the car to get it? Sure. Did I? No. I took my business elsewhere.

On other occasions, I might be a passenger; the driver might be in another store in the mall area. Quite inconvenient to fulfill the store’s stupid request. And it is a stupid request, which is my point.

Danceswithcats, that might be what this store is going to. Since I didn’t provide a DL, I don’t know if they would have swiped it or not.

But if so, talk about an even worse invasion of privacy. It’s bad enough that the store discount cards keep electronic records of every single item you buy associated with your name and address. Now they’re going to know how much liquor you buy, what brand, proof, and when? Isn’t that overdoing it a bit outside of a police state?

11

Just playing Devil’s Advocate here, but I guess if the professionals could play dress-up, kids who are not undercover creeps could, too, and maybe get away with it.

Certainly a store with a no-exceptions policy would always come clean, no matter what. Even if a fake ID were offered – and assuming the store’s computer isn’t tied to the state records – the store could always say they did their best.

And in New York or Chicago, maybe that’s necessary. And maybe that’s where this policy was made; I don’t know where the home office for this chain is. But around here, it’s patently ridiculous. One of the reasons many of us live here is to avoid the big-city hassles, at least for as long as we can.

12

I suppose the electronic record is the price you pay for paying less.
I not only could easily pass for 50, I happen to actually be that age. I don’t often buy wine at Target, but every time I do, I get carded, which is pretty funny, especially when, as described before, the checker has to go get somebody old enough to sell me the booze.
I guess the ‘card everybody’ policy supposedly makes things smoother for Target, but when they have to go get somebody else to sell it to me, it does seem a bit silly.

13

Hang on a sec…[Devil’s Advocate Hat] OK, fine. The issue is less to do with you, an adult, than it is to do with the underagers who have already learned how to photoshop id cards. Requiring them to counterfeit a mag stripe raises the bar (no pun intended) don’t you think?

When Billy and Bonnie end up in a car that’s wrapped around a tree, and Billy has a BAC of .06, the first thing the parents do after thanking Og that their little darlings are alive is look for someone to villify.

Sue Volvo, the guy who inspected it last week, the authority who paved the road, the homeowner whose tree got hit, the guy walking the big spotted dog who saw the accident, the bar that furnished the booze they drank at Joe’s house, Joe, Joe’s parents, Joe’s parent’s neighbors, and on and on into the night.

Can you honestly blame Mr. Tavernkeeper for wanting to protect his assets? [/DAH] :wink:

14

Except, here, the store that didn’t card me was $1.50 cheaper!

But that might have been an isolated incident. Still, I have found that, for many store staples, the cheapest brand/item is often NOT the one on sale for cardholders only. More times than not, if you look very carefully, you will find the same generic item at a regular price cheaper than the discounted special. The tag announcing the “special – cents off” catches the eye, but if you assume it always means that that one is the best buy, you will be misled.

15

My local supermarket has a prompt on their checkout software that asks for the date of birth for all alcohol & tobacco purchases. I haven’t been carded there for many years (I’m 33, and finally look over my mid-20s). Every time I buy beer, the cashier enters 111111 (i.e. November 11, 1911) for the date of birth. I have to assume that I am not the only one that gets that date entered.

I wonder if the companies auditors have noticed that there are one or more 93 year olds that buy a metric assload of beer, wine and cigarettes.

16

Danceswithcats, I want to tread lightly here, since I’m not 100% sure I am getting what you’re selling.

First, I’m not sure how Mr. Tavernkeeper got involved, since I’ve yet to be carded in a local bar to get a beer. Yet a bar, where liquor is consumed immediately, after which the patron drives home would seem to be a bigger threat to society than a grocery store where I might stock up once a week for home consumption, but drink nothing on the way home.

And are you suggesting that it is reasonable for all facets of society to protect itself by a mandatory tracking of where each of us goes by GPS, using auto computers to write self-tickets for speeding, your car to refuse to start if you don’t perform proper maintenance regularly, a giant computer tracking everything we buy and use, etc.? Technologically, all this is possible, and more. And it would surely “protect” the innocent – who need fear this tracking except the guilty?

Am I understanding you?

17

Wouldn’t it be less annoying just to post a sign that says, “You will be asked for ID if you look under 25.” That’s what the food store across the road frm me did.

Mind you, this was for selling tobacco, not alcohol. In Ontario, you have to go to special beer or liquor stores to get alcohol. But still…

18

Heh. Just doing my best to poke holes in your complaint. It’s not working this time, though.

See, you’ll never catch me leaving my wallet in my car. I figure that if my car is ever stolen, losing my wallet along with it would just be adding insult to injury. Plus, I keep all of my money in my wallet, reserving my pockets for spare change and my keys, so it’s kind of a must-have item to have with me if I’m shopping.

I’d say that it’s a marginally stupid request. On one hand, anyone with a brain can tell the difference between someone older than 50 and someone younger than 21. However, having worked retail quite a bit in the past, I’m fully aware that someone will eventually sell alcohol to someone under 21 and end up costing the store money.

This is one complaint that I really don’t understand. I mean, what does is matter if they collect data like that? Do you really care whether or not some corporation knows that you bought a six-pack of beer last Saturday? If they want to spend millions of dollars collecting, storing, and trying to make sense out of the combined data of every transaction from every store, I say let them.

19

It’s an astrological thing. Everyone born under the same sign (the “triple-elevens”) has become a drunk and a chain-smoker, just as the stars predicted.

And if the date is connected to your store card, you should soon be getting lots of ads for plush plots to plant your wrinkled carcas in. :slight_smile:

Serially, tho, I’ve seen prompts like that, but they only say “check ID” or some such; they don’t ask for an actual date. I think that’s a good idea; it reminds the clerk that this purchase is a little different.

I’ve seen signs like that, too. Now that makes sense. And I don’t think the clerk would have any problem if she/he thought the buyer looked 30, but just wanted to be sure. That’s a reasonable judgment call. But to require it for all just doesn’t make sense, unless they are trying to build a database.

20

And I say it’s none of their fuckin’ business and, yes, I do care. Is my objection a rational stance? No, but it’s the way many people feel.

(And my ire isn’t directed at you, Joe, but at the system.)

And if you want to let them, that’s your business, too.

I’m well aware that it is unlikely that there is a little man sitting somewhere looking at my personal purchases, tsk-tsking about how I buy too many Doritos bags and too few broccoli bunches, snickering at my magazine purchases, and chuckling at how empty my life is. Of course my figs are more likely massaged and mangled into collective numbers and stats – I know that. I don’t fuckin’ care. Privacy is mostly in the head, anyway.