In Kentucky, where I live, the rule is “if you look younger than 40, you get carded.” Doesn’t matter if it’s for alcohol or tobacco.
Forgot to add that, in Kentucky, they want you to remove the ID from your wallet/purse so they can scan the barcode on the back.
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For me in Ohio, this seems to depend completely on the store. I’ve only ever had that done at Target and they do it every time. At grocery stores I almost always use self-checkouts and the workers usually just look over from wherever they are and press something saying you are old enough.
Sure, that’s [del]retarded[/del] sensible.
A friend of mine was snooping around in her 17 year old daughter’s room and found a PA driver’s license that showed her daughter was 21. She confiscated it.
We showed the license to a bar owner friend of mine, at his bar. We asked if he’d serve the person. Knowing there was a reason for us asking, he went over it very closely, using a magnifying glass and a black light. He declared it “real”, and was shocked to be told it wasn’t.
I’ve worked convenience store jobs in NH and TX. When I first moved to Ireland, I briefly worked at a convenience store (or “petrol station”, as it’s known here).
Back in the States, even decades later, I still remember it being drummed into me how fraught with risk alcohol sales were (for a variety of reasons, not just underage customers) and how I would be held personally liable for any legal violations. One place I worked they even told me that the local cops liked to send in underage kids to try and buy booze, so they could run some kind of a “sting” operation.
Over here? Nothing of the kind. Law says 18, so if ID says 18, it’s within legal hours, and they’re not already visibly drunk, you’re good to go as a sales clerk. Even after living here over a decade, I’m still getting used to how informal the culture is, coming over from a highly legalistic USA. Another example: I was waved through a police checkpoint after showing them my expired NH driving license. They heard my voice, saw a non-Irish license, and couldn’t be arsed to bother looking into it!
Boredom compels me to play along: as what race are you presenting, in your current incarnation?
IIRC, femmejean is black like me.
Here in Indiana, at my store, you are supposed to ask anyone who looks to be under 40 for an ID. This applies not only to alcohol but also ammunition, airguns, tobacco, fireworks, R-rated moves, and certain types of over-the-counter cold medications. The required ages for purchase on that list vary from 16 to 21 but I guess the company found it easier to just say if someone looks under 40 then card 'em.
I’ve occasionally had someone (always a woman) get offended because I didn’t ask them for ID. Sometimes with the exclamation “You think I look OLD!!!” Um… yeah, if you consider 40 to be old. One old biddy was getting very upset over the whole thing and I pointed out the gentleman who had just purchased beer was 22, and referred to her as “mom” the whole time they were in line and I just rashly assumed she was at least as old as her grown child.
I’ve had to refuse sales to people with legit ID’s because
- They attempted to purchase alcohol on a forbidden day (no such sales on Sunday in my sate)
- They were drunk/high/clearly intoxicated
- They openly stated they were planning to buy alcohol for a minor or someone who didn’t have proper ID who might be a minor. (the most recent was a young woman who did not have ID on her who angrily insisted that with three young children at home she had to be over 21. Um… no, actually, it’s entirely possible to have three kids (or even more) by 20, and in any case, there was no proof of the kids to be had, what with them being at home. She then turned to her boyfriend/husband/baby daddy and demanded he purchase the wine for her. I pointed out that with that statement out in the air I couldn’t sell him any alcohol either at that point, as it might be selling alcohol to someone buying it for a minor. I hate scenes like that, but I don’t want to lose my job and deal with the potential legal consequences.)
- The government-issued ID was from a foreign nation the language of which I couldn’t read sufficiently well to determine which set of numbers was the birthdate. I managed to figure out the Mexican and Croatian driver’s licenses I’ve been presented with but, I’m sorry, I was completely defeated by the Chinese ID.
Same here in Indiana. I occasionally get “but they didn’t make me do it last time!” or “Since when?” Too bad, I actually follow the rules because your need for ease and convenience does not outweigh my need for a job.
As for the OP: Hard to say for sure what was going on - do you look young for your age? Did the clerk think the ID was improper for some reason? And if you aren’t Caucasian or a sufficiently foreign-to-Ireland looking Caucasian yes, prejudice could have been a factor. We only have one side of the story and incomplete information.
At the airport bar, I once saw a server refuse to serve a 60+ year old gentleman and his similarly aged lady companion until both produced an ID. There was a little bit of are-you-joking and arguing, but eventually rules-is-rules won out and they got their IDs out.
I was twenty and had just moved to Pennsylvania when I wanted to see I am Curious: Yellow. The cashier was carding and really didn’t like my California driver’s license with a pic, thumbprint and other unique features. I hauled out my draft card and said, “Look, do you think I’m going to register for the draft early just to see a goddam movie?” and she let me pass. I was wondering just how fancy Pennsylvania licenses were, then I got one. It was a three inch stub of a Hollerith card with nuthin’ but a description and a signature. No picture, no thumbprint, no anything.
Not related at all to buying alcohol, but this last trip to the States, I finally had to get an international driver’s license. I had kept renewing my Utah license while my mother lived there, but I couldn’t anymore after she left.
You need to keep the international license with the license from your resident country, which is Taiwan for me now.
One night I forgot the international license and only had my Taiwanese license. Luck had it that I was stopped by the police. I showed them what I had and after about 15 minutes of the officer and his supervisor trying to figure out what to do, they let off with a warning.
I hereby award you One Internet.
When I was 19 (age to buy alcohol was 21 in South Carolina) I was hired by a regional manager for a convenience store chain to test employees’ compliance with company policy for asking for ID. Company policy was card if they look under 40, and I was nowhere close to that.
One night the manager arranged to have several of the stores staffed by employees who were thought to be stealing from the till. She had wanted to fire these people but did not have sufficient proof to fire them for cause.
So we went around to several stores throughout the night. We would pull up, I would go in and buy a six pack, and then kneel down by the door to look at the magazine racks before leaving the store without the booze. I headed out to her car, told her what happened, and she would go in and fire the employee on the spot for cause. Wait until the on call store manager arrived to take over, and then we would go on to the next store and repeat.
I was given strict instructions to provide my real, valid, local state driver’s license and to not lie if asked my age. One employee looked over my license and sold to me anyway. Another looked over my license and asked me my age and still sold to me when I said I was 19 years old. Most never asked for id. Only one asked for id and did not sell to me and that was a stop at a store run by a more reliable employee.
The regional manager explained several times to the dismissed employees that this is exactly how the state runs their stings with an underage person showing their real id. The advantage the employee had in this situation is they did not get a big fine as well since it wasn’t state law enforcement catching them.
So fair warning, one more reason to not sell to someone with id is that it may be a genuinely underage person showing their real id as part of a sting.
Except that didn’t apply to femmejean, as he is of legal age to buy liquor in Dublin by two years. There would have been no penalty to the server to sell to him, although it is acknowledged that purchasing alcohol is not a right and that the server was within her rights to card him and to refuse the sale, anyway.
Well played 
Could someone explain the joke, it seems ironically that I’m ‘really not all that bright’ in this situation. 
Assuming that you are talking about the original joke and not the “you win the internet” meme.
It’s possible to read this as meaning that k9bfriender* waited in the line while he was growing his beard - which obviously would have taken a long time. Hence, the joke:
- Whose username I just decoded! What a maroon I am! :smack:
It’s possible it could have been real in the sense that she got a forged birth certificate, and went to the DMV, took the driver’s test with the forged birth certificate, and then got a genuine license with a false birthday.
Usually, fake licenses are made by cutting out a picture from another person’s license, and pasting in your picture, but if this license had her daughter’s name, then she may really have managed to obtain a real license with the wrong birth year. So while the license was in many senses illegitimate, it still wasn’t fake, if that makes sense.
Or, if her daughter has a common name, like Jennifer Smith, or something, she may have lucked out that someone close to her age, but old enough to drink had a license locally, and so she went in and claimed to have lost her license, and showed mail and a library card, and got a license. This would depend on how long ago it happened. It used to be a lot easier to get a lost license replaced with pretty flimsy proof of identity. It’s been harder in the last five years or so.