Well, see, i do not want them to type in and save my DoB either.
It is important-
A subset of PII that, if lost, compromised, or disclosed without authorization could result in substantial harm, embarrassment, inconvenience, or unfairness to an individual. Some forms of PII are sensitive as stand-alone elements.
a. Examples of stand-alone PII include Social Security Numbers (SSN), driver’s license or state identification number; Alien Registration Numbers; financial account number; and biometric identifiers
I do not buy booze at gas stations- where I also pay cash since there is often a small discount for doing so.. And true, you do reveal your CC number, but not any Sensitive Personally Identifiable Information.
For every purchase of any thing? And that may be coming or consumers may revolt, or groups like Consumer Reports or AARP may protest.
The one that gets me is not allowing foreign driving licenses that can be used to drive a car to buy a beer. Like, this UK driving license shows the cops that my brother is qualified to drive tons of metal at freeway speeds down American roads, but my brother (who it obviously decades older than 21) cannot use it show he’s older than 21 so he can buy a beer WTF!?!
I am going to hazard a guess that this is more about the clerks (and management) at a local store in the U.S. don’t see UK driver’s licenses frequently (if at all), and aren’t familiar with how to tell if a foreign ID is valid or not. Combine that with stores which have a blanket “we card everyone” policy, and you wind up with that sort of situation.
Nope having discussed this with a few folks, I can confirm in San Francisco that a foreign driving license is not listed in the valid ID documents the ABC lets bars confirm their customers age with. So the documentation standards for telling someones age to buy beer is higher than for telling if they are qualified drive a SUV
IIRC it’s legal to give a child under 5 alcohol in the UK if it’s fir medicinal purposes (eg bourbon on the gums fir teathing or flat beer for an upset tummy.)
Yeah, I had a family doctor that we saw for a while tell me to do that. It was the straw of a lot of ummm, odd things that sent us running from that practice.
When I was in high school, Illinois driver’s licenses used dot-matrix printing. It was trivially easy to open the lamination, erase a few dots, and change the birth year from 1968 to 1963.
Thirty years later, when my son got his license, states had apparently gotten wise to these tricks. In Connecticut, for example, driver’s licenses for drivers under the age of 21 had a completely different color scheme and orientation (portrait instead of landscape). Definitely a lot harder to alter.
Right, IME many “dry” Texas counties allow drinking in private homes and “clubs.” So if you went out to a restaurant and wanted a drink, they would invite you to join their club, which you could do on the spot. For a modest fee, of course.
ETA: Google AI tells me it’s not a federal requirement, but all 50 states and DC now do it voluntarily. It seems the Real ID law caused a general re-think and upgrade of the states’ DL processes. Including the design of the credential itself.
Back in the day Salt Lake City was the same story.
Some restaurants were truly dry, some would sell set-ups and you could BYO, and others were “private clubs” where you could buy a membership for a small fee then be served from the bar. IIRC $5 at a time when that was about the price of a drink.
I visited Utah on business in the 90s. All of the bars were private clubs and the fee to join wasn’t very expensive but there was something like a three day waiting period. However, if you were a guest at a hotel nearby you got a waiver and could drink there during your stay. The hotel issued you some kind of card.
Back in the late 1960’s, when I got my California license, if you were under 21, your picture was a profile. You could face the camera when you turned 21.
Wow, i was never carded until… Well, maybe around 1996, but i was obviously of legal age by then. I was never carded when i was under age. Society changed.
I think it’s funny that now, when i have gray hair, i am routinely carded, but i never was when i was under age.
(Actually, the liquor store doesn’t card me. I guess it’s their primary business, so they trust their employees to card the people who might be too young. But everyplace else does. The supermarket obviously cards everyone who buys restricted beverages.)
I tend to look a bit younger than my actual age, which is slightly nice now that I am in my 50s. So I don’t blame the cashier at all. But what’s funny is that liquor stores tended to be careful, and bars (even when I was underage) did not care. Not that I went often, and was with friends who were noticeably older and obviously of drinking age.
Hehehe, I had co-workers approach me as I was getting off work to buy them beer when I was 17. I had four more years until I was legal. I told them “Yes, I can buy it at the Conoco across the parking lot. But I can’t here at the Kroger we work at, because they know how old I am. Also, I’m the guy with the dyed long black hair in your algebra class.”
I’ve looked older than I really am since about 14 or so. I’ve probably been carded more after 40 than I was before I was 21. Part of me is flattered when I’m carded today, part of me remembers that my wife’s high school theater class made up one of her classmates as an old man with a bald cap and had him go buy them beer, and he succeeded. Can’t be too careful, I just look too much in character now.
It has nothing to do with my looks. It’s a change in how seriously society takes the drinking age laws. (And probably a change in the vendor’s liability under the law, although i don’t know that.) Maybe, if I’d looked 13, i would have been carded. But almost no one carded people who looked plausibly old enough to drink. My parents bought be a drink at a restaurant to celebrate my 18th birthday. The staff probably heard us discussing that. 18 was under age, but no one cared. And no one carded literally everyone. Most supermarkets near me card absolutely everyone these days, even people who are obviously well over the drinking age. I assume it’s just simpler/safer for them.
(In my current state, it’s legal for parents to buy booze for their kids, but no restaurant would, today, trust that you are the legal parent. My son did extensive research on the details of the laws when he was ~17. And a friend who makes his own wine from his own grapes used to bring bottles to parties we all attended, and my son would bring me to the friend who would hand me a glass that i immediately handed to my son. Because that was technically legal, and just handing it to my son wasn’t. The laws can be weird. But just this weekend, a restaurant wouldn’t let me and a friend sit at the bar because she had a baby with her, and the baby was underage - and not verbal enough to order a drink on her own )
Another passing thought, though it doesn’t really relate to showing an ID.
I attended a college out of state when I was 17 YO, turning 18 in my freshman year. In my sophomore year, when I was still 18, the state where my college was located dropped the drinking age to 18. Yay!
Eight years later, they decided they had made a mistake and raised it back to 21.
And I think to some extent it also depended on where- the first time I was carded was literally my 18th birthday ( I’m old enough that the age was still 18). I was drinking in neighborhood bars when I was 16 - but the carding happened in a bowling alley, which was different from a neighborhood bar in ways that most likely contributed to the difference in policy. (corporate ownership, lots of clearly underage kids in groups that also contained people that might be 18 )
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