People who just leave things on a shelf at the register should be banned from the store. My register is not a dumping ground.
At lease a dozen times a day I have to ask “Do you want that item?” When the customer realizes I’ve seen them dump it at the register, they usually shake their head “no.” Then I say “Can I please have any item that you don’t want?”
And yes, we usually have one or two carts full of returns (items to be returned to the shelves) at the end of the day.
Recovery was a “multiple times a day” event at the thrift store I used to work at, and we STILL had a load of stuff just dumped in wrong sections or the fitting rooms (which had racks RIGHT OUTSIDE).
Yeah, scanning and especially swiping is bad, it takes all the data.
Looking is fine, and perfectly acceptable.
And if they have to enter the DoB, it should be only the year or at most year and month.
The only thing the scanner does at the store I work at is grab the age data from the bar code on the back. It doesn’t grab anything else, and it doesn’t even save that. Honestly, more than half the time it doesn’t even work that well and we have to resort to the old Eyeball Mark I but store policy is that we at least try to scan it first.
And yes, it is store policy. It is also store policy that if you refuse to allow it you can be denied your alcohol purchase. Or you purchase of ammunition, fireworks, R-rated movies, certain types of cough syrup…
Yes, we are in the business of selling stuff. We are not, however, in the business of risking fines and/or jail time because of your paranoia.
I get it, I’m not entirely happy with the 21st Century, either, but it’s when we currently live. Until I get a TARDIS we’re sort of stuck with it.
Meanwhile, if you want to change that practice feel free to lobby your state legislators, because it’s the law as written that is driving this sort of practice, even if it is not enshrined in law. Change the law to prevent scanning of ID for that purpose and the stores will stop doing it. Until then, the lawyers say it protects the stores and (more importantly, to me at least) it also protects the store employees.
Every time that I’ve had my card taken from me to be swiped, the cashier didn’t even look at the picture, just swiped the card.
At best, it creates a paper trail of compliance, but in reality, it does little if any good at preventing underage sales. (and at worst, creates a treasure trove of PID for a hacker to compromise.)
Again - the store I work for does not save the data.
And cite for checking ID’s not preventing underage sales?
So, indeed, the purchase can go thru without scanning?
And so what? Its BAD store policy. “I was only followink orders”
It’s not in any way shape or form “paranoia”. I am a certified expert in this field, and I have provided no less than five cites that back me up, and three cites that show Target has had several disastrous data breeches. You may not work for target, but your data can be breeched also.
Having the clerk check the ID is all that is required by law. No law in any state requires swiping the ID. Yes, it does protect the store a bit from a lazy or incompetent clerk. But it puts the customer at risk. The answer is not hiring incompetent clerks and training, not putting their customers at risk.
You say that you have been told that your store doesn’t save data. I have no reason to doubt you, but I have some small reason to doubt what you were told, and I have no reason to apply your experience to the corner store down the street.
And actually checking ID can prevent underage sales. And by checking, I mean comparing the picture and description on the ID to the one presenting it.
Scanning an ID without looking at the picture, as has been the case in every single time that I’ve been asked for my ID to be scanned, is not checking ID, and does nothing to prevent underage sales. IME, they don’t even look at it any more than is required to make sure that it is aligned correctly with the reader.
The orders are not illegal and I have a certain interest in remaining employed.
Our clerks are not incompetent. They are trained to scan the back of licenses. That is the store training and the store policy. They also are trained to look at the pictures. We’re on video the entire time we’re at a register and our work is spot-checked randomly, as well as when a complaint occurs. If we’re not doing it right we hear about it.
If you don’t like a store’s policy don’t patronize that store. Don’t take your ire out on the peons, and don’t call employees following store policies incompetent. Again, if you don’t like it don’t go to that store. While you’re at it, pay for everything in cash and don’t carry a smartphone. We do have customers that do exactly that.
Actually, I don’t know that it is actually required by law to check ID, only not to sell to underage individuals, which is something that you are allowed to check ID to confirm.
If you were a store that never checked ID, and yet somehow managed to never sell to an underage individual, you’d get in no trouble at all. It’s that “never managed to sell to an underage individual” part that gets tricky without IDing customers.
I’d rather they had them to my clerk up front, as opposed to the time a customer didn’t want a bag of salad shrimp, so they wrapped it in a cloth place mat, and hid it at the back of the place mat shelf.(I had to damage out the shirmp and 12 place mats
I love that the people who scream the most are 19-23 year olds. especially when state law says the minimum standard for checking IDs is for people who appear under 30.
No, because if someone who turns legal age on December 18th 2019 buys an age restricted item on December 5th 2019, we have violated the law.
And also, states need to teach people that a half sized photocopy of the front of their license on a crumpled sheet of paper is not an acceptable form of ID anywhere other than a local store run by a chaotic evil NPC.
A couple of months ago, a very pregnant friend asked me to stop at the store and bring her sparkling apple juice and Sunny Delight for mimosas. I got carded for the sparkling apple juice, showed my ID, paid and started walking out when I heard the customer behind me giving the clerk hell for demanding ID from me over apple juice.
Seriously? If it bothered me, I would have said something. I didn’t care, I always have my ID in my wallet, why wouldn’t I and would it really hurt me to open my wallet and show it to the nice person who is trying to get through her day? I was in a hurry, so contented myself with saying something like “none of your business, lady” as I left.
I’d have probably joked about being IDed for fruit juice, myself. Maybe lighten the cashier’s day a little.
Living in California, I’m frequently surprised by the OTC meds and other miscellaneous household chemicals I have had to produce ID for, including those compressed air cans. If it really annoyed me, I’d be checking in with regulatory bodies. That sort of thing, when the register is programmed to stop everything and not allow the sale until ID info is entered, is WAY above the cashier’s pay grade to decide.
I’ve been a convenience store clerk who regularly heard about the possible sanctions for selling restricted products to someone who was not legal to purchase them including fines, jail time (hi, criminal record that screws employability in the future!), and at minimum loss of employment with big black mark on record. Just not worth risking my future so that someone with a case of paranoia can avoid being treated like everyone else instead of like royalty who shouldn’t have to abide by laws and policies meant to protect jobs and businesses from criminal sanctions, thanks.
I didnt call “employees following store policies incompetent.” the incompetent ones are the ones who can’t be trusted to LOOK at a ID and know the person is over 21. The ones that your company seems to think you all are. It’s* your company* calling you all incompetent, not me. The policy of scanning the iD is clearly there to protect the store from incompetent staff. I think you all would be Ok by looking at the ID. Or hell, looking at a 50 ish guy and going, “Yep, he’s over 21”. Like saome store have “If you appear to be under 35, we will ask for ID”. Not a guy with greying hair and a cane.
I didn’t get mad at the employee, i asked them to call a manager. I didnt even get mad at the manager, altho my letter to the CEO was a bit mean.
And even if I pay in cash, i still cant buy stuff if they insist on swiping my ID.
Yes, exactly one year of people need to have their day recored. Not everyone.
It’s not "checking the ID’ that’s the issue. It’s swiping all the data from it into a un-secure system, which* will be hacked.
*
and has been hacked.** Multiple times. **
I have no problem with ID being checked. It’s a good idea. It’s ID being swiped and all the data being entered into their system. And it’s not paranoia as not only have I shown that Identity thieves can steal your ID from that data, but in the case of Target, their date has been breached no less that three times. Paranoia is when you are worried about something unusual happening to you. Risk management is when that thing has not only happened to millions of people, but has happened multiple times.
*Retail giant Target will pay an $18.5 million multistate settlement, the largest ever for a data breach, to resolve state investigations of the 2013 cyber attack that affected more than 41 million of the company’s customer payment card account… Using the credentials to exploit weaknesses in Target’s system, the attackers gained access to a customer service database, installed malware on the system and captured full names, phone numbers, email addresses, payment card numbers, credit card verification codes, and other sensitive data.
Along with affecting 41 million customer payment card accounts, the breach affected contact information for more than 60 million Target customers.*
When it happens to over **FORTY ONE MILLION **people- and multiple times, it’s no longer paranoia.
Where you the one standing in line after me? Cause if you were, you were rather rude. Did you happen to notice that the clerk just looked at it. At no time did she have my ID in her hand, and she certainly didn’t swipe it. Had she asked me to take it out of my wallet and hand it over, I might have said something about showing ID for apple juice…or I might have just left and bought it at the next store.
Seanette I don’t think the cash register demanded ID, I think the clerk just glanced at the bottle, saw something that looked like wine and asked for ID because that was how she was trained…or maybe she was running on autopilot. No reason to get into that conversation when someone has made a mistake.
My friend got her fake mimosas and was happy. Tomorrow, I am going to see if I have issues taking another bottle of “wine” to the hospital. Hopefully when she wakes up, she will have gotten over all that Sunny Delight nonsense.
You should not have been carded for the sparkling cider. They Sunny D on the other hand … 
It’s an accountability issue. We get fired/fined/ imprisoned if we’re wrong. If you don’t like it, get the government to change ID laws.