Daniel went to his local Safeway with his brother to buy some beer. Daniel had his ID, but his brother didn’t—but that’s okay, because Daniel was the one buying the beer. The cashier, however, felt otherwise, and wouldn’t complete the transaction without carding both of them. The store manager told him “the policy is, at the discretion of the clerk, to check the ID of every person present.”
The manager hinted that this was a liability issue, but it sounds to us like Safeway’s employees have decided to play morality police instead of following the actual rules. Daniel sums up the problem:
The bottom line is that walking into a store and leaving without purchasing anything should never necessitate showing an ID. This policy creates that scenario and does not in any way prevent underage drinking. Loss of freedom and no added prevention. Lose-Lose.
Here’s the letter he tried to send to Safeway, but they don’t provide an email address on their website or in their press releases. (You can find phone numbers and a mailing address for Safway here, Daniel.)
Yesterday I decided to purchase a six pack of beer. Sure, there are liquor stores near me, but Safeway happens to be about a block from my house. So my brother and I, who recently turned 21 and promptly lost his ID, walked the fifty yards to Safeway. Upon arriving at the register with beer in hand I was asked for my ID, not a problem. The clerk then asked for my brother’s ID. My brother had not touched the beer, nor had he handed me money, etc. I was taken back, after all I had made this exact purchase with my brother a handful of times already and had never been asked for his ID. I told the clerk this and he said that it was Safeway policy to ask for his ID. Needless to say we walked out of Safeway, sauntered across the parking lot and paid the same price for the same six pack at a convenience store – with no hassle.
Still irked by this today, I decided to stop by Safeway and see if I could find out exactly what the policy was. After speaking with the manager of the Safeway I walked away with a clearer view of the policy. The policy is, at the discretion of the clerk, to check the ID every person present. An additional reason, as the manager explained to me, was one of liability.
On the surface this sounds like a reasonable policy. However, upon further thought, it is far from reasonable.
To begin with, checking the ID of every person present does not stop underage drinking. Hell, the manager himself suggested I have my brother wait outside next time. Also, I’m pretty sure that if the clerk asks for ID and I show it to him, the liability of the store stops right there. To say it does not means that Safeway is responsible for what I do with the beer after I buy it.
The main reason this upsets me is the need for someone that isn’t buying anything to show ID. If a mother and her prepubescent son walk into Safeway and she buys a case of beer, do you card the son? Clearly (I would hope) not, because there is no indication that the son is going to be drinking the beer. I’m interested, based on appearance alone – what criteria do you use to decide if that person with the alcohol purchaser is going to be consuming it? If my underage Mormon friend, who doesn’t drink alcohol, tags along for the purchase am I to be denied buying alcohol? There are all sorts of scenarios that can be described that destroy any sound purpose for this policy.
The bottom line is that walking into a store and leaving without purchasing anything should never necessitate showing an ID. This policy creates that scenario and does not in any way prevent underage drinking. Loss of freedom and no added prevention. Lose-Lose. You’re also losing all of my business until I have in writing that his policy has been revoked.
If even the manager acknowledges that it’s a trivial “security measure” that a customer can get around so easily, why not just put an end to it?
(Photo: Getty)
Every time we ever bought booze in college (in Boston) this is exactly what happened. You don’t go shopping with underage people and everyone brings their IDs. What’s the big deal?
I had this happen at a few grocery stores, well most. Only one that doesn’t do it to me seems to be walmart.
I can’t even buy beer at the local Kroger here if my younger brother is with me. It doesn’t matter that I might have a cart full of groceries – if I hadd a bottle of tequila to that when my 18 year old brother is with me, I cannot purchase it.
Even if I send him out to the car, I am not able to buy it.
Great letter there, OP. Really really well-written.
It’s funny to recall when I was 14 and visiting the Czech Republic and my younger brother, my cousin (he was like 12 at the time) and I went up the hill from my grandad’s cottage with a pitcher to fill up with beer at the local pub and bring back. No ID, no card and no under-aged drinking; just 3 kids under 14 buying and carting a pitcher of beer home (oh and REAL beer, not that 2.9% alcohol crap).
My mom had to wait for me at the checkouts at a Green’s liquor store in Atlanta while I went in to purchase beer because they card on the way in rather than on the way out. Supermarkets will not check ID on entrance. The best setup I’ve seen to date in a supermarket keeps the beer/wine/liquor in a small area at the side of the store with its own checkout; if the poster’s brother encountered such a layout he could have easily waited outside the ID-checked area without causing a fuss.
This happened to me a couple weeks ago. I was with about 15 girls on our way to a pre-bachelorette party dinner at a byob place. 3 of the girls didn’t get the BYOB memo so when they stopped to get a 12 pack at a deli when we walked past, they wouldn’t serve them unless all of us marched in. (We were all wearing black – it was pretty obvious we were all together.) So, whatever, we did. 10 minutes wasn’t really a big deal, and the place had lost their liquor license before. The clerk was just doing her job.
This happened to me in college. Some girl friends and I tried to buy two bottles of wine (that nasty fruity stuff that’s barely alcoholic anyway), and they insisted on seeing the id’s of everyone.
I saw this happen in walmart but they went ahead and sold the beer to the guy, I couldnt believe they were doing it, seems ridiculous to me.
This happened to me all the time at Wegmans when I lived in New York, and now they do it at Siegels in Dallas. For me, it’s mostly happened in college towns. It’s annoying, but once you’re aware of it you can kind of work around the issue. I always figured it was something that chain stores had policies for.
I hate it when I’m buying drinks for some hot under 21 girls and they get carded too. What’s up with that?
(totally joking because I don’t talk to girls =/)
Sorry, people, but the dude above me is right. The store can refuse you at any time for any reason when it comes to this sort of thing.
Meh! no biggy, im from the UK and work in a bar and even though our drinking age is 18 we HAVE to ID anyone that looks under 21, even other people in thier party/group, if they don’t ALL have ID, no sale. Seems to be pretty common practice both sides of the Atlantic.
FWIW, liquor and cigarette laws are often written so that the clerk–not the store, not the manager, not the chain, not the corporation that owns the corporation that owns the chain–the clerk is the one on the hook for fines.
With my own two eyes I watched the powers that be in Ohio cite one of my coworkers at a convenience store in an underage beer-sales sting. (A damn good one, too: that 17-year-old could have been 30, if you ask me.) The fine was a few hundred dollars, which is to say about three weeks’ take-home pay for her.
So there’s actually a powerful incentive for wage-slaves to invent three or four layers of additional stupid policy, on top of the existing stupid policy. I know I didn’t want to have anything to do with selling beer after that incident, which meant that I went from being the sullen convenience store clerk who grudgingly rings up your order, to the sullen convenience store clerk who just disappears from the register altogether when you head over to the beer cooler, forcing you to get the even-sullener deli clerk to ring you up.
This has happened to me a number of times before. The most frustrating was at a Meijer in a college town in Michigan. I was buying a few things before a birthday party, one of which was an $11 bottle of Asti. My friend had tagged along and at the last minute decided to buy a cold soda and something like gum or a toothbrush…
We went through the self-check out lane – I went first and my friend stood near me holding her 2-3 items waiting for me to finish so she could use the machine next. When it prompted me, I took my ID over to the lady monitoring the self-check lanes. She didn’t even punch my info into the computer before asking where my friends ID was.
I told her it was a separate order, that my friend was actually 23 (I was 21 at the time) and that she didn’t have her ID on her (it was in her purse in the car and she was planning on just paying cash for her purchase) and the lady would not back down, demanding to see BOTH of our ID’s even though I was clearly the only one paying for my order. Finally after holding my ID and my transaction hostage for about 3 minutes I returned to “my” register, grabbed the bag of still up-paid items, gathered my friend’s few items and dumped them all on her podium announcing “I don’t want any of this crap if you’re going to waste more of my time carding people who aren’t buying my things for me!”
Then we went to the liquor store around the corner and got the same Asti for about $3 less with NO ID check at all. Plus, we managed to forego all of the impulse items we had grabbed at Meijer.