I don’t see it so much in Virginia, but I’ve had trouble getting an adult beverage at a bar in Maine and Massachusetts without a driver’s license issued by those individual states. I remember actually trying to buy beer at a convenience store in Maine with a Massachusetts driver’s license and they wouldn’t accept it. WTF is that about? I was 27 as well.
I’ve had trouble buying beer in Worcester, MA with a VA license (I’m now 33 and lived in Worcester for most my first 31 years!). Pulling out, dusting off and using my best Worcester accent, I “gently” (haha, nothing’s gentle with that form of speech) explained the situation to the bartender. He accepted it and served me a beer.
I think it’s really fucking stupid to be a dick and not serve someone who OBVIOUSLY looks old enough. What, pissed off because you’re scraping by on this $8 an hour job? Don’t take it out on me.
Why are Americans so tight when it comes to ID anyway? When I was 23 I spent about 3 months travelling across America, and I lost count of the amount of times I had to argue my way into clubs and bars because the fat fucking mongoloids on the door refused to accept my British passport was proof of my identity. I’ve never encountered this level of relentless paranoia in any other country.
I’ve worked in English pubs, bars, and nightclubs for about four years and never, not once ever, have I worked for a manager who would instruct me to deny service to a guy wielding a valid drivers license, let alone his passport, let alone both! Maintaining that a guy might be someone other than he claims to be when he possesses both a driver’s license and a passport is to ascend to dizzying new heights of paranoid, more-than-my-job’s-worth, cynicism. The only exception I would make to this would be if the guy bore absolutely no resemblance to the photo’s on either piece of documentation.
If it helps, try to understand what they’re paranoid about.
Not “Homeland Security”.
Not terrorism.
No, what they truly, truly fear–no joke–is . . .
.
.
.
.
.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (or your own state’s variant thereof). You never see black helicopters from the CIA hovering around, but you do–oh, most definitely, you do–encounter undercover TABC agents looking to fine your ass, your boss’s ass, have you fired, and unlikely ever to work in the same job again.
Anecdote: I once walked into my neighborhood convenience store and noticed the cashier was extremely down in the mouth. I asked what was wrong, and he said that TABC agents had just been in and busted him for selling without checking ID (to an agent who was underage, I assume). He had to call his boss at home so boss could come by, take over the store, and fire him in person.
“Boy, that sucks,” I said.
“Not as much as the $2000 fine they’re hitting me with”, he responded.
Another of those little quirks of federalism that makes our country so charming.
Not so fast. One local grocery chain has decided to card EVERYONE. That way, they can never lose, so they think. It’s pretty silly to see little old white-haired ladies being asked for a valid driver’s license before they can buy that pint bottle of gin.
Defective: Why not give the address on the card? They’re just trying to see if you know what’s on it; they don’t care where you actually live and have no way of verifying what you say, anyway. So the printed address is always where you live. Problem solved.
Yeah, I appreciate that the penalties for serving under age drinkers are harsh, but surely they are only dished out to people who don’t bother checking for ID at all, or accept ID that’s obviously faked. We have similar agencies in the UK as well, and similar penalties by the sound of it. However, if an under age patron somehow came to possess both a realistic fake drivers license and a realistic fake passport, I think those agencies would be forced to give any establishments who served him the benefit of the doubt. I mean, short of giving their clientèle DNA analysis tests and retinal scans, there really isn’t any surer way to ascertain someone’s true age than by looking at their driver’s license and passport.
That said, if it turns out that I’m wrong about this, and that a club owner or barman could still be punished for serving someone under age even though they appear to have credible photo ID, I’d probably concede some need for such paranoia.
On top of that, there’s also the fact that some minors manage to get hold of alcohol somehow, get drunk and kill someone with their car while drunk, and then the store or bar that sold the stuff to them gets sued by the victim’s family and loses.
Stolen a licence and a passport that have his photo on them?
I don’t agree with asking for things like graduation year. I’d have to work out the year I left school by trying to remember how old I was and then add it onto my birth date.
I was going to say the same thing. I spent a month in Texas and Louisiana about 10 years ago. I was in my late 20s.
I had my Canadian picture drivers license and passport.
It happened to me twice - bars denied me entry. In order to enter, one must produce state issued ID. Emphasis on state - as in one of the United States of America. My Canadian ID meant nothing to them.
It seemed that those who were denying me were totally unapologetic too. Like they were an automaton on cruise control. No one outwardly questioned the validity of my ID. It just didn’t conform to their short list of acceptable ID. I suppose there’s really nothing for them to lose except the money that I was going to spend that evening. I’m a tourist; obviously I’m not going to be a long term client.
Is it possible that Texas’ ID policy is designed (unintentionally, I’m sure) so that foreigners are unable to legally enter drinking establishments or would this be a poor interpretation of the actual law by the establishment or door personnel?
Imagine Toronto night clubs implementing the same practice? “I’m sorry sir. Your New York drivers license is not an acceptable form of ID. You need something issued by a province. What’s that? Your passport? You’ve got to be kidding me. Go away now.”
I would imagine that even in the UK, if a patron LOOKS like he’s younger than the legal limit (Hey! I didn’t think Europe had minimum drinking ages), the checker needs to ask follow up questions, whether the id looks legit or not. That is certainly the case in the U.S.
In the OP’s case, he probably doesn’t look like he’s 21. So he failed to clear the first hurdle. Hence the follow up question. He failed. At that point, no matter how many other forms of id he presented, he still failed 2 tests and wasn’t going to get vodka from that establishment no matter what other id he produced. Not necessarily because the cashier was convinced that he was truly underage, but because if she did serve him after that point, she had no defense if it turned out he was not.
I had that problem in Texas. I was trying to buy cigarettes with a Minnesota driver’s license and was close to being turned down because the cashier thought it was a fake.
What’s surprising was this happened in San Antonio, which is overrun with military personnel, so you’d expect people to be familiar with IDs of different states. But military people probably use their military IDs as proof of age.
I’d like to confirm what’s been mentioned once…in several states I have moved several times. I was required to update my address with the DMV, but I was not issued a new license with the new address. Whenever I was asked by a policeman if that was my correct address, I would respond, “No, but I’ve updated it with the DMV as required.” If asked for the address that appeared on the license, I probably would have been able to get it, but things like apartment numbers may have disappeared into the mists of time.
Secondly, I carry my passport with me (and have for years) and I have no plans to flee the country. I travel abroad and need it every so often, and when I’m asked for a second form of ID that is the one that I offer. I had to do so just the other day.
While carrying a passport may have been the exception 10 years ago or more, these days people should be getting used to it.
More importantly, I would like to suggest that the time for bartenders and bar owners to be inspecting ID and quizzing patrons should be long gone. Just as clerks at the quicky mart shouldn’t be required to be handwriting analysts and check the signature on credit cards, bartenders shouldn’t have to be detectives to determine if someone is using a fake/borrowed ID. The patrons should be required to swipe a valid ID (driver’s license, passport, whatever) and if the ID is valid they should be allowed to enter. If they chose to break the law by swiping a fake/borrowed/stolen ID, they should be targeted by the police or the Alcohol board.
If the state wants to make the laws, they should enforce them.
And making another law saying the bartender should enforce the laws is just not right.
I was wondering, given the ‘no passport’ assertions earlier in the thread, of what those posters did (or would do) when faced with a foreign passport. Or a foreign (and non-Canadian) driving licence. My passport has always been accepted without question in America and Canada, but I’ve never ventured anywhere that it’s unusual to encounter tourists.
There’s no ‘has to’. The law is that serving somebody underage is wrong. Whether or not you force patrons to jump through hoops is a decision to be made by management. Plenty of supermarkets etc. have signs boldly telling you that they challenge anybody who ‘looks to be under 21’ for ID, but it doesn’t make much difference.
The minimum purchase age is 18 in most of Europe, although laws about consumption are separate. In Britain at least, there’s no great market for fake IDs. I presume the reasons are a combination of it being easier to be served underage without being checked, the lower legal age making it less necessary to get one, and perhaps because the driving licences are damn hard to counterfeit.
I’ve lived where I live now for the past seven years; prior to that I lived in a mobile home community (not a damn trailer park) and I absolutely cannot remember the street address I had. For that matter, I’ve lived in eight separate states and absolutely could not come up with a single street address. I do have a list of prior addresses but I don’t carry it around with me, and I’ve never met anyone who did. We live in a mobile society; job transfers are common; changes in employment are common. What rule requires us to remember a street address we had two or three years ago when we might have had that address for less than a year?
This is the law in Ohio. I’m sure there are similar laws in each state.
"Ohio law prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages to persons under
21 years of age. Ohio Revised Code Section 4301.22(A) (see page 7)
states in part, “…no beer or intoxicating liquor shall be sold to any
person under 21 years of age.” The penalty for this violation is a fine up
to $500 and/or 60 days in jail. Ohio Revised Code Section 4301.69
(see page 9) further provides that no person shall sell or furnish beer or
intoxicating liquor to a person under 21, unless given by a physician in
the regular line of his practice, or given for established religious purposes,
or unless the underage person is accompanied by a parent, a
spouse who is not underage, or a legal guardian. Violation of this law
is a misdemeanor and can result in a fine up to $1,000 and/or up to six
months in jail. For a liquor sales agent, this could mean termination of
your liquor agency contract with this division.
Ohio Revised Code Section 4301.639 (see page 12) provides a
defense for a seller who, in good faith, accepts spurious or false identification,
providing the seller complied with the outlined procedures of this
section. It is the duty of the seller to question any person who, from
their physical characteristics, appears to be underage. Before selling
beer or intoxicating liquor to any youthful appearing person, they must
present a valid photo driver’s license, chauffeur’s license, or state of
Ohio identification card correctly identifying their age. Laxity and
indifference to purchases of alcoholic beverages by underage persons
will not be tolerated. Obtaining satisfactory proof of a purchaser’s age
the direct responsibility of the person making the sale. The seller must
take every precaution to prevent illegal sales, and when there is a doubt
and the buyer cannot prove their age, the sale must be refused.
The clerks must ensure the person handing them the identification
is actually the person that appears on it. Steps must be taken to
verify the identification being presented accurately represents the person
purchasing the alcohol. Failure to do so may result in an underage
alcohol sale and lead to charges against the clerk and the permit.
You’ll also note that none of that requires an establishment to check IDs, nor is there any language stating what does or does not constitute acceptable proof of age–that is left to the discretion of the establishment’s management. There is no penalty for failure to request ID at the time of sale. There are only penalties for the sale of liquor to a minor. Exactly as in GorillaMan’s post.
I’ve worked behind bars in no fewer than three countries, on three continents. Admittedly, one of those countries was not the United States, where idiocy in ID requirements clearly reigns supreme.
I would believe it, because i’ve seen it. And i’ve turned people away for it.
But if you get given both a driver’s license AND a passport, and you can’t tell whether the person holding them is the person in the picture, then you’re not smart enough to tell gin from scotch, and shouldn’t be working in a bar in the first place.
