Humour

[alitalf]

From the Dilbert newsletter, "True tales of people who put the duh in induhvidual."

While trying to buy two bottles of wine in a supermarket I was asked, "Are you 21?" Trying to be funny, I said, "No, but my daughter is 22."

The checkout clerk replied "I'm not interested in how old your daughter is. Are you over 21?"

BTW I did upload the remainder of the wedding photos - at least, all the ones that were worth looking at.

Comments

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

I have met some similar brainless muppets when buying alcohol - they're so stupid they just repeat what they have been taught without engaging any brain cells whatsoever. (nb. I am not implying that everyone working in a shop is brainless, far from it, just this particular category who I am on about).

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

That's scary!

[naath.livejournal.com]

Ah, but these days you can get fired for not insisting that the customer confirm their age (possibly with ID) even if you personally think they are 50...

It's annoying; but personally I'd rather annoy a customer a bit than get fired. Fortunately these days I have a "real job" and don't have to worry about such things.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

True, but there does come a point where someone is SO obviously not under 21, unless they suffer from some kind of disorder (one that I've never heard of either) you couldn't possibly be making a mistake.

I'm against this "under 21" thing anyway, it implies there's some kind of twilight zone between the ages of 18 & 21 (even though I see where they are coming from, it's still a stupid way of putting it). They should say "if there is any doubt that you are old enough to buy alcohol you will be asked to provide ID" - something like that would be much more sensible and less annoying.

Personally I think they should make it a (more serious - is it an offence at all? I think it is) offence to buy alcohol if you are under 18, and re-loosen the rules on vendors so that it'd have to be proven that the person being sold the alcohol was so obviously child-like that they couldn't have made a genuine mistake. Because all this "how old do you look" is ridiculous - some 14 year olds on balance "look older than" some folk 2 decades older, and I'm not kidding.

I also don't understand the notice about "buying alcohol for a minor" since you are allowed to GIVE alcohol to a minor (eg. at home) anyway, so that doesn't even make sense. I'm glad that I'm largely out of all this stupid nonsense about what you can do at 16, 17, 18 and how you look and all sorts of other illogical or contradictory legislation, but really feel for my young 'uns as they come into it. (eg. You can legally have a baby at 16 but you can't buy a knife to cut up their food for them for another 2 years, wtf?!? how stupid - I'm sure anyone who wants to stab someone will just a get a kitchen knife from somewhere anyway?)

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

Don't expect logic from our government. They'd probably like to prevent anyone from having anything nearer to being a weapon than a bendy rubber spoon, but the only way to achieve that is to nibble away at age limits.

I surmise that part of the reason that checkout people are in danger of losing their jobs unless they act like misprogrammed robots is the danger of a supermarket losing its licence to sell alcohol if it can be demonstrated that they did sell to anyone under 18. A radio programme a while back related the story of the police using sting operations to try to catch out retailers who are not careful enough. They used people a few days or weeks under 18, choosing ones who look much older, used professional makeup to make them look as old as possible, instructed them to lie about their age (and probably trained them in how to be specially convincing), then sent them to try to buy alcoholic drinks.

I guess that the supermarkets don't want to get caught out, and maybe they reckon that if they have a firm policy of dismissing any checkout person who does not go through the correct procedure, they may escape without losing the licence if a checkout person fails on the procedure and gets fooled.

A letter in a newspaper (so it must be accurate!) told of someone who had no acceptable ID, so suggested that her daughter, who had ID, bought the wine. The checkout person would not sell to the daughter either, "in case she gave it to her mother, who could not prove she was over 21".

Mind you, at an extreme pinch, and with truly wonderful stage makeup, the police *might* make a sting like that work. I'd hope they would not go quite that far, though. It would seem quite pointless.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

IIRC the checkout person gets personally fined if they sell alcohol to someone who is underaged, so there is a strong personal drive not to do so (I'm assuming that most people working on a checkout do not have very much in the way of spare money for fines).

[rustica.livejournal.com]

The number of times I get the "Alcohol!" shout as I go through the checkout with my alcohol-free Becks, clearly marked on the packaging...