My first impulse is to say I wouldn’t have posted had I any idea this goes on. OTOH it has been interesting, and educational!
Oh…Kay. Let’s take this in two parts.
One. There is no bar that has ever based its ID check policy on customers “delicate sensibilities.” No one has ever considered that a customer might be offended for not being carded, as this is not something human beings do. I mean, seriously, what the fuck. IME, more people take offense or are annoyed by being carded. Bars make their policy on what the laws require.
two. My second two sentences were an afterthought. I thought that would be clear, but I suppose I should have added “also” or “as an aside” or something that would make that clear, but I figured “The Smartest People on the Internet” could figure that out on their own. My bad.
At a Dick’s Sporting Goods I got a paintball CO2 tank filled (for my sodastream). At the register I was asked my birthdate. I couldn’t see why CO2 sales would have a minimum age, so I did not play nicely. I told her my birthdate was January 1, 1901. She dutifully entered my data, but the cash register would not accept her input. I asked if she was calling me a liar. She called for a manager.
When she explained the problem, he voided the sale and started over. He asked my birthdate and I told him January 1, 1901. He keyed it in, the register declined the sale, and he looked at me with a puzzled expression. He told me it was a computer glitch, I was obviously old enough for the purchase. So he called his supervisor who over-rode the register and allowed the sale.
I’m pretty sure the first manager went home that day and told his wife he met a guy who was 116 years old yet looked 50.
I understand the impulse to do that - but as the person in line after you who had to wait for two management types to come over and eventually get your sale done so I could buy my three-pack of ping pong balls, please don’t do that again.
You aren’t sticking it to the store, or the man, or anyone - you’re just being sort of a jerk.
It’s compressed gases in general.
Also over fifty with a gray goatee so I can’t really remember the last time I got carded. Maybe a few years ago when the grocery store was on a “if you look under 30” (which is still a stretch) jag. Then again, I no longer do anything that requires carding, so there you go.
Y’all talking about alcohol sales like it’s the only ID requiring transaction … I still get carded for cigarettes.
Min age is 18. I’m 37.
(I don’t know who this Dorian Grey fella might be* but folks make jokes about him to me all the time.)
Thank you. Anyone who plays games or tries to hijack a situation to go their way WHILE THE LINE STACKS UP BEHIND YOU earns the frostiest and most contemptuous glare I can muster. Take that, kayaker!
- Joking for humorous effect. I’m an English major, I know exactly what that oil painting up in my attic is for.
Of course there was no line!! I would never do that.
This was at the Galleria Mall on route 28 (a dying mall only a decade old). There hasn’t been a line anywhere in that mall since opening weekend.
LOL, you’re bad!
There’s a guy at a local convenience store who has sold me beer at least once every month for the past 15 years or so. He still has to card me. At 17-18 I was never carded (18 was the legal age at the time).
Nope… no such law here. Some establishments have it as a rule, but not a law. I’m in my mid 50’s and the only place that I get carded is Kroger.
Exactly. In my state, the law does not demand that everyone be carded; but there are a growing number of businesses who have that policy in place. It’s sad that an employer cannot give their workers the benefit of the doubt that they are intelligent enough to know that a 50-plus-year-old customer is old enough to buy their product.
And it really does go well beyond alcohol sales. I was carded not too long ago at Target, when I bought a video game.
Tennessee does require everyone to be carded for alcohol. Everyone. If you want to be carded one more time, just come on to Tennessee.
I have also been carded and had to agree to a check to see if I was on a register for known meth offenders or something just to buy Sudafed! Fucking junkies ruining it for everyone.
Then he is sadly misinformed, as he just told me that a week ago, about it being the law for everyone in Indiana to be carded regardless.
I knew someone in Texas whose only valid ID was his passport. A store in the Dallas-Fort Worth area would not accept it, telling him he had to have a valid state ID. Whether that really is a law or it was just some clueless clerk, I can’t say.
Ooh. I got carded yesterday. I got new tattoos and I had to present my driver’s license, does that count?
#humblebrag
I would vote strongly for clueless clerk. A passport is suppose to be a valid ID. I wonder if he would have said the same thing for a military ID? That is also Federal and not state.
I am in my sixties and can’t remember ever being carded. I bought my first beers at 17 (legal age at the time was 21), but they were all in military messes, where I suspect they figured if you’re in uniform you’re allowed to drink, not to mention that there was no chance the local cops would be showing up to check. The legal age was dropped to 18 a couple of years later, then put up to 19 a few years after.
Even when I started to go to clubs and have a beer or two, I don’t think I was ever carded. I had no driver’s licence at the time, nor any other ID that likely would have been accepted.
Currently I will buy beer or booze at what are essentially government-run outlets (LCBO and “The Beer Store”) and am never carded. Ontario has opened up to selling beer and wine in grocery stores in the last few years, and buying there might be a different experience.
I’m 46 and female, with enough of a baby face that I’ll still sometimes get legit carded if I’m in a sweatshirt and/or baseball cap. It happens less and less these days, but that could be largely because I tend to hang out/drink with people who are clearly over 50.
I spent this past weekend at an indoor jazz festival, held in a Hilton, and both Friday and Saturday nights my friends and I adjourned to the hotel bar. On Friday night I didn’t get carded, but on Saturday night the (different) bartender carded me and said he needed to see the ID of the friend I was buying a drink for. Fair enough, except that as soon as he saw her face he said, “Never mind, she’s good!” I thought that was actually kind of mean: the least he could have done was glance at her license, since she’d walked over with it! (My friend is in her early 50s; she doesn’t quite look her age, but is obviously over 21.)
I figure I have 5-10 more years before I start actively enjoying it. When people used to say that to me, I thought “older” meant, like, 40. 
I have neither the hotness nor the desire to date younger men, so day-to-day there is no benefit to walking around looking like I’m 30.