I think the issue here was simply that they exchanged money in front of the cashier - making it obvious that although the father was buying the cigarettes, it was the OP that was receiving them. Now obviously, he wasn’t doing anything wrong because he was the right age, but the cashier didn’t know that until he checked.
This happened to me once in NC. I had forgotten my license, and went in to buy cigarettes. She chose that day, of course, to card me, so I shrugged, said I didn’t have it, and sent my then-boyfriend into the store instead. He also came out empty handed - because she knew he was with me. NC has a law forbidding this:
(from www.wecard.com). Virginia has a similar law. Wecard is actually a great place for tobacco law info.
I worked in a grocery store in NH where alcohol is also sold. (Here in MA you can’t get any alcoholic beverages in a grocery store.)
In the John/Mary/Mom scenario I would not have been able to sell to John and Mary but I could have sold to Mom had she shown up.
Our store used the ‘we card everyone’ policy. We carded the entire group regardless of how old they looked. 85 year old Grandpa buying some wine - yup carded him too. Pissed off a lot of senior citizens lemme tell ya! But if I failed to card anyone I would lose my job.
The stupidity of the kids though always amazed me. Yeah, lets run rowdy through the store and call attention to yourself by showing off - a lot - then get to the register with alcohol and get pissy when we won’t sell to you because most of you are underage. Don’t wink at me and tell me I can come to your little party later if I just let you through. I’m not interested. Also, every time you passed a department acting like morons on parade someone called the manager. The person running the front end was waiting for you to show up there and is watching to ensure I card every one of you. Oh and sending your buddies out to the car and coming back through my line won’t work. My manager watches for that stuff and will not let me sell to you.
I believe the reasoning behind them not selling the alcohol if a group comes in and some of them are underaged is it is reasonably assumed that the purchases made are for the group and not just the individual with the cash. If all they bought were two pizzas and a bag of chips and a case of coke then that’s no problem. Substitute beer for the coke and the store assumes the beer is for everyone. Therefore even though the one of age person in the group paid for the beer the “group” bought the beer and the store could be liable.
So the lesson for today is leave your underaged friends in the car.
MrValley and I were buying our household supply of groceries. Included in the full cart was a bottle of white wine we were going to use as part of a recipe for cheese fondue. When we got up to the register, the cashier asked us both for ID. He produced ID showing that he was in his mid-30s (we were both far older than 21). I had not brought my wallet, since hubby was using his credit card to buy the groceries. They refused to sell us the wine.
So apparently stores need to protect us from a husband potentially buying a bottle of wine for his wife. (We have matching wedding rings, which we pointed out to the cashier.) I suppose we could have cleverly made matching rings and purchased $80 worth of groceries merely to disguise the fact that he was buying a bottle of wine for someone underaged! :rolleyes: Seriously, if I had been young enough to be underage, I would have been damn close to being young enough to be his daughter. Would a grocery store deny selling wine to a father and daughter?
Anyway, the end result was he went into a nearby store and bought a bottle of wine for the recipe while I waited in the car.
You guys are making a lot of sense. Unfortunately, you’re running into two major problems. The first is The Law, which is seldom based on sense, and the second is Store Policy which, speaking as a former retail drone, is seldom based on sense and is usually used so no one has to use sense.
Heh…this seems to be turning into one of those “it’s legal” vs. “it’s stupid” threads, where nobody actually disagrees with each other, but we’re arguing because we can’t decide what we’re arguing about. Basically the kind of thing I was trying to prevent in this thread, which unfortunately failed to attract much attention.
For the record, the OP (me) is just pointing out that the rule itself, whether based on law or just store policy, is asinine and wrong. Green Bean, you pretty much nailed it with this:
Even if that’s not currently the fact of the matter, the point is, it should be. Chains of accountability piss me off. That’s really the core issue of the matter.
Oh, and TellMeI’mNotCrazy:
First of all, I wasn’t receiving the cigarettes. I don’t even smoke. If I’d wanted them, I would’ve bought them myself, since as you pointed out I am of legal age to do so. Second, what part of my father giving me a dollar suggests that the cigarettes were actually for me? Read my above two posts regarding that. I’d quote them, but then I’d be quoting a quote of a quote, and I think we can all agree that that’s just overkill.
Yeah, in Indiana an underage cashier is not allowed to scan the alcohol. It makes absolutely no sense, but it’s the law. I always wondered about the logic behind that.
Sidenote: Greenfield, IN is my hometown. I never expected to see it mentioned on the SDMB. hee hee.
Man! What a pain in the ass. Of course, following store procedures and the law all at the same time can be such fun. And fates forfend that you get some manager with his knickers in a twist thrown into the mix.
Actually, the above situations wherein a certain amount of groceries were purchased as well as the alcohol were how I always managed to buy booze when I was underage. And I was never once carded. Of course, this was back when the earth was cooling and you had to worry about being stomped by a rampaging dino or run over by a precursor of the automobile that we referred to as a “Nash”.
Not to broadcast my ignorance or anything, but just how common are those instances where you buy groceries and are not allowed to purchase booze at the same time? That concerns me. In a good, I’m-a-concerned-parent-of-a-twelve-year-old fashion, but still.
The same thing happened to us. We were out grocery shopping and I’d left my purse at home, along with my ID, because I didn’t think I was going to need it. We went through the lane with our full basket of groceries and a 12 pack of Corona. They asked for my husband’s ID and then mine. I didn’t have mine, so he couldn’t buy his beer.
I think I look like I am over 21, but adding to that, I was about 7 months pregnant at the time and very obviously showing. I told them that there’s no way I’d even be touching a drop of that beer since I was pregnant (And I don’t like beer anyhow.) but he couldn’t buy it. We stopped at a gas station on the way home and bought it there.
I understand it’s the law, but it’s silly.
Everyone is missing the point here: The OP was buying cigarettes!! My god man, did you then go and set a puppy on fire or perhaps drive over an old lady?? Have you not been watching those ads by The Truth? Thanks for giving me cancer!!!
There are times in society where it is acceptable to put additional responsiblity on people who are not directly responsible for an action. Most of these seem to involve alcohol.
Bartenders can’t serve drinks to someone who is obviously drunk. Some venues place restrictions on how many drinks you can purchase at one time. In both of these cases the law requires sellers to act a little like a nanny because society has decided that the consequences (drunk driving, binge drinking/rowdy behavior) are too great.
Underage drinking (and apparently smoking) are situations where society has imposed additional responsibility on the sellers. I’ve been told in liquor stores that the entire group must be of legal age for any member of the group to buy alcohol. While it may seem silly at times to enforce the rule in extreme situations, it makes it much easier for the clerks.
Yeah, it sucks some times. I’m not sure I agree with the current set of laws in all cases. But I certainly understand the motivations of the laws.
Did anybody realize that the cashier that sells anybody underage, cigarettes or
alcohol can be fined and sent to jail? Besides the business is fined also. Not sure about you, but I didn’t think it was worth it to not ask for ID. I am not about to pay a fine or go to jail for anyone. So what the man saw between the father and son, could have been mistaken that he was really buying for the son. If the son didn’t have ID, I would not have sold the cigarettes.
It’s called covering one’s ass. :mad:
Back in 1972, when I was 16, I got a job washing dishes in an Italian restaurant (in Southern California, if it matters). They didn’t have busboys at this restaurant; all tables were cleared by the waitresses, who then passed the dirty dishes, glassware, etc., through a little window into my little scullery-corner of the kitchen.
Any time a vessel containing more than half an ounce of beer came through the window, the waitress would have to walk around to my side and empty it into the drainage basin. Struck me as pretty dumb at the time, and it still does. The restaurant owner was standing fifteen feet away, and always had a perfectly adequate view of me and my activities. Even if I had been tempted to try sneaking a glass of abandoned beer (I wasn’t, by the way; the stuff reeked like overripe bananas), sneaking much of anything wasn’t much of an option.
Shortly after I first arrived in LA, I tried to buy wine at Ralph’s. (Along with a cart full of groceries, FWIW.) I was 24 at the time, and still carrying my Pennsylvania ID because I hadn’t gotten my California license yet.
The cashier asked for ID, which I willingly handed over. She looked at it the same way a person nowadays would look at an ID card with the name “Mohammed Atta”, and called the manager, who refused to sell to me.
Is that a valid reason to refuse a sale? I was once told that since the layout of a driver’s license varies from state to state, it might be difficult to discern a fake ID from a real one. But there are ways to verify an ID. Check for signs of tampering. Ask the person what their astrological sign is. Have them sign a piece of paper and see if it matches what’s on the card. Look for the presence or absence of the red banner that says “Under 21”, which most, if not all, state DMVs have.
Sheesh. I mean (as I said at the time) I could understand if I’d been trying to pay with a CA check and a PA ID. But the ID only had to match me, and it did.
This is common. In Ohio, one grocery store used to refuse to sell alcohol to anyone without an Ohio license. This grocery store was located in a shopping center which served as a park and ride for Ohio State football (out of state alums and fans of the visiting team) as well as military recruiting offices (servicemen from all over the country).
How utterly silly society is for all these stupid laws. Thanks MADD, why don’t you just admit you want to bring back prohibition. Drop by drop, that is exactly what you’re doing.
It could be construed that he unthinkingly gave you the “extra” dollar you’d given him to purchase the tobacco. I think the attitude stinks too, but I can see how they’d arrive at the concept. Not a nice feeling to think that you give off such an unflattering impression I know. I don’t know what to say to this, it’s crappy. I don’t think stores should be held accountable EVERY time an adult buys alcoholtobacco for a minor at their store, but I do think that in some cases the stores should be. (As in cases where it is more than reasonable to conjecture that the alcohol is being purchased for the group, which includes minors.) It’s just hard to make a comprehensible law that can be applied fairly that does so.
To some extent I think that people get a bit power-crazy when it comes to IDing. I worked at a convenience store and was scared to death of mistakenly selling beer or smokes to a minor, but there was no need to be on a power trip.
For example, my co-worker one day IDed a kid who was trying to purchase some Marlboro lights, and he didn’t have an ID. So he left. Now, the way the place was set up we couldn’t always see people parked behind the building, so we couldn’t see who he was with. Seconds later a young man comes in and asks for Marlboro lights. He has ID and is 18 and legal, but she refuses to sell him the cigarettes based on the fact that he looked about the same age as the underaged kid, so therefor he must be buying them for him. Seconds later a girl about the same age comes in (with ID) and asks for Marlboro lights. My co-worker refuses. At this point I said “I will sell them to you,” and did. Marlboro lights are the most common brand, were we to declare a moratorium on selling them until Mr. Underaged was gone, even though we couldn’t even see if he’d left yet?? My co-worker was just on a serious trip. Or scared so much of the consequences that it was clouding all rational thought.
BTW, my boss sided with me. My co-worker, however, hated me forever. Which was fine.