having had teenage employees…You have to make it really concrete or you get things like “I thought that guy with the tattoos WAS his dad…”
since there is no way to make someone PROVE that it’s their kid…you just make a blanket policy.
Related thread where a guy whinges that he got kicked out of a bar because he couldnt’ remember the address listed on the drivers license he presented.
As I said then:
Not only that but I know what a Wisconsin ID looks like, I’ve (technically) been trained on how to spot a fake Wisconsin ID. If someone walks in with an ID from Idaho or Montana, and the ID has holograms were it shouldn’t or the picture on the left side instead of the right, or whatever, I’m not going to know it’s a fake. That’s another reason why some people refuse to take out of state IDs.
That kind of logic is drilled into me. We don’t have a barcode scanner so I spend my day trying to get the teenage employees to stop ringing up seafood as coffee and beer as wine and etc etc
Another example would be the little liquor filled chocolates. Underager tries to purchase them, they come up as liquor, cashier asks for ID, the patron comments that it’s just chocolate and the cashier says “yeah, your right, must be a mistake” and bada bing you have a 15 year old with 12 shots of liquor. That’s the type of thing that makes the managers tell the cashiers, no judgement calls*, if it asks for an ID, you must get one, period.
*I like to say “don’t think, just do” IOW if I tell you to do something, do it the way I ask, not the way that you think is better, it’s usually not.
I had previously thought that clerks/stores couldn’t get in trouble unless they DIRECTLY sold alcohol to a minor, but now there’s contrary evidence in the thread. Good to know 
Now to complicate things a bit: Is this a state law or a federal law? Does this apply to Indian reservations as well? (Yes, I know Indian stores can enforce the same policy at will, but are they required to by federal law / state agreement?)
I know that in West Virginia they had what was called “Responsible Vendor” classes. I don’t know if they were sponsored by the state, the police, M.A.D.D., whoever, but if you were a business that sold off-premesis alcohol, you could pay money and send your employees for training.
There they taught you “tips” like have been talked about in this thread. Then your business was on a three month probationary period. If you passed all of the inspections, then they basically called off the dogs and you didn’t have to worry about getting “stung” by the state ABC.
My younger sister tells me that the only thing this has done is made the stores which sell to underage kids constantly “roll” from on to another. The “responsible” store gets complacent because the inspectors don’t come around, so word gets out that they will sell booze to underage kids, then they get busted on a tip.
Then they go back to “Responsible Vendor” class. Meanwhile another store is in the “underage” process and it rolls through the community.
Hell, when I was her age, simple, old-fashioned cash payments to the authorites kept them off of you. Morgantown, WV was the worst. There would be 100 convenience stores acting like some of the stores in this post, while another store down the road had a freaking LINE out the front door of 18 year olds buying kegs… Those were the days…
:rolleyes: to you too. Did you read the thread? The clerk knows because the person buying the alcohol shows him their ID. The husband had ID showing he was of legal age. The mother (presumably) had ID showing she was of legal age.
You still haven’t explained how the clerk was supposed to know the wife and daughter were of legal age.
The wife and the daughter weren’t buying alcohol. The daughter, in fact, wasn’t of legal age (see post 4), but she wasn’t the one buying the alcohol.
The whole point of this thread is not about clerks who are refusing to sell alcohol to people who aren’t old enough, or who don’t have ID. It’s about clerks refusing to sell to people who are old enough, and who do have valid ID.
again, they are doing so because they can go to jail if they sell to someone who does have a valid ID and has minors with them.
I think it’s been established in this thread that clerks have excellent reasons to do just that in the circumstances described.
You’ve made it clear that you don’t like this state of affairs.
So what? Is there anything further to discuss?
Yeah…a believe me the clerks don’t like it either.
No, the whole point of this thread (see the title at the top of your browser) is clerks refusing to sell alcohol to people of age, with a valid ID, but WITH other people who are either minors or don’t have proof that they are of the legal age.
No, the whole point of this thread is to provide me with some entertainment on a lazy, lonely Tuesday. But that was a good guess!
This is far too sensible an idea for the UK to adopt. 
I thought about this, and I’d like to amend my statement:
If a store refuses to sell ANY merchandise to a customer, for WHATEVER reason OTHER than following federal, state, or local law, I in no way see where the customer has to restock it.
Notice that I’m not making that statement for store policy, which may be (and apparently from this thread usually is) stricter than law. I know, when I go into a liquor store, that I’m not buying booze to give to my kids for a party. If store policy is not to sell to me because I went in with my kids because the liquor store is next to the supermarket and I happened to have the kids with me while I was food shopping, that’s the store’s problem, not mine.
As a practical matter, in your hypothetical, would you really want the 15 year old to walk back through the store and put all his stuff back on the shelves? Considering the quality of the job he’d probably do?
The practical effect of this law seems to me to be to prevent the purchase of alcohol by an adult with ID accompanied by underaged or ID-less companions on the first occasion said persons encounter such a situation.
Would any group of semi-intelligent 15-18 year olds simply decide “Hey, let’s remember to hang out in the video store this time, while 18 year old Fred goes in to purchase a shitload of booze for everyone”? Don’t parents of teenagers learn to park around the corner with the 16-year old sitting in the car when they go in to pick a bottle of wine?
It would make more sense to me to require the clerk to summon a policeman to follow a suspicious-looking adult buying teen-friendly booze, from a legal perspective, rather than empowering the clerk to make judgments about the motives of an adult bearing proper ID. I don’t get the legal principle involved that allows him to make that sort of judgment. Certainly if someone objected to being refused service, he should be allowed to have that judgment tested on the spot, and to file suit if that judgment is upheld.
I should be able to buy booze if I’m not categorically impaired (ID-less, drunk, passing fake-ID) regardless of who I choose to associate with. It’s not the clerk’s opinion that should deprive me of my legal right to buy a bottle of wine, and I should be able to challenge that judgment if it’s being abused, but I don’t see much legal recourse here.
Amazingly, no. I’m surprised too, to be honest.
The legal principle involved is that middle aged men with teenage daughters in the store don’t generally purchase “teen-friendly” alcohol for their own (adult) use. Therefore, as far as the store is concerned, the alcohol is being purchased via a proxy or second party, and is likely to end up in the wrong hands (ie, a minor).
As liquor staff, we’re trained to make those sorts of judgements. We’re not always right, but we err on the side of caution and the law basically says “QQ More n00b” if someone has a problem with that.
More importantly, the police have considerably better things to do with their time than follow people around for buying alcohol that might be considered “teen-friendly”. Lots of middle-aged or elderly people like RTD drinks and Passion Pop, and as I said before we don’t care if one person buys a bunch of “Lolly Water”. It’s when that one person buying a lot of lolly water has a teenage son or daughter with them that the alarm bells go off and we have to assume the grog isn’t entirely for them. It’s taken on a case by case basis, but in all situations, if we knock the sale back we’re backed up both by Liquor Licensing and our own Head Office.
You should, but you can’t (at least here). But that’s true of a lot of things in a lot of places.
I think the problem is that the US drinking age is way too high- it’s 18 here, and that means that 16 and 17 year olds are the ones who could be inappropriately getting alcohol when they’re not ready for it, hence the Liquor Nazi laws to make sure that doesn’t happen.
No, because in the larger scheme of things, the right to buy booze at your own convenience is always going to yield to other societal and legal concerns. In the big picture, your inconvenience in this regard isn’t really important enough to everyone else to change things.
Fine, but alphaboi867 was asking how the clerk knew they were of legal age. An irrelevant question, because in the one case, the daughter wasn’t.
cite? Because the only actual cite I’ve seen is Martini Enfield’s, and I don’t see where it says this. To requote (bolding mine),
Subsection (1) applies on or in the premises. That means the clerk would need to intervene if the potential minor attempted to carry (or drink!) the alcohol while on the premises. It doesn’t say the store is responsible for actions of the adult off of the store premises.
I looked up the Responsible Service of Alcohol handbook that Martini Enfield mentioned (the one I found is for South Australia). The only relevant bit, under SECONDARY PURCHASE, on page 40, says
It describes fines the adult furnishing the alcohol to the minor could receive, but says nothing about any penalty for the clerk who sold the adult the alcohol. Frankly, that it doesn’t describe any penalty makes me believe there isn’t one.