Cry said:
Yeah, when asked about it I either hear "Its the law" or "Its for the camera". That's understandable at some level, but what happened to common sense? Its not just kids either, its people my age as well. Hopefully the "camera" isn't to harsh with whatever punishment it deems acceptable. Doing things because of the camera...even when those things make no sense at all.
The land of the free and home of the brave!
Pet peeves...lol. I'll be OK...
This is still not about the individual, the camera, or even the law. It's about corporate policies. Say Corporation X has thousands of stores across the country, and they don't want to be responsible for a charge of selling to minors, so they make it a policy to card every customer regardless of age. That way, there is no question for the monkey running the register, and if any employee ever makes a mistake the corporation can point to a policy and wash their hands of the liability. They'd rather make an arbitrary rule in the name of idiot-proofing than allow common sense to exist. The employee is told to card everyone, so he does.
I know you're being a bit flippant in posting this so this isn't a lecture directed entirely at you. Instead, it's partially a rant for the state of the world in which we live, where people now expect to blunder through life with all of the corners padded and if ever someone bumps his head it's the fault of someone else for not padding that corner. And any company big enough to have a perception of that has to comply with public expectation and pad all of their corners.
The ID thing doesn't generally annoy me, as I know it's not coming from the person at the register. The only time it really did irritate me is when I applied for my Enhanced Driver's License from the DMV - and, at the time I applied, they sent the paperwork to process my request and send my EDL in the mail, and at the same time confiscated my current ID! For the interim several days, they printed me a "temporary ID" on plain 8.5"x11" computer paper..... yes, that was in fact my only state-issued ID. When I tried to buy beer at a chain store, I was carded, presented my temporary ID, and explained to the monkey behind the register why it was on computer paper. He called a manager. The manager declined my ID. Even though I'm visibly over 21. At that point I was annoyed because, they weren't just going through the motions of following policy rather than common sense, they were actively disregarding common sense in the name of a policy that didn't apply; I had a legal state issued ID and they chose not to accept it. "If the state came in, we'd lose our license" the manager said. "No," I returned. "You would lose it only if you sold to me and I was underage, which you can see I'm not." Of course, common sense did not prevail, as monkeys are trained to follow corporate policy.
What did I do next? Drove a half mile down the street to a mom n' pop store and bought a 12 pack without being carded. If you're irritated by this in your daily life I again suggest doing your business with a store that still fosters common sense.