Judged by Waitrose

[Prioryfodder]

Waitrose would not let me buy alcohol because I was accompanied by my 15-year-old daughter. To explain, just before Christmas, I had bought a basket of groceries and two bottles of Malibu (actually destined for her older brothers Christmas stockings to make long island iced teas, but that's irrelevant IMO). She had briefly handled the bottles to put on the conveyor belt for me. We then waited some time for the cashier to clear. We were clearly together and frankly we are clearly mother and daughter. The cashier (rather smugly) said she would need ID from both of us to sell me the alcohol. I said I was 56 and she 15, but the alcohol was for me. She - and later her manager - asserted that we both had to be over 18, and to prove it. I asked if they would sell it to me if she left the shop. No. Would they sell it to me if she were 6-year-old? Yes, and I was ''not to be so silly'', said the cashier. My daughter feels she was judged as being an underaged drinker, and I feel judged to be a 'bad mother'. Vote: Yes, you are AIBU, you should never shop with your teenage child, you fool. YANBU, FFS at 56 you should be allowed to buy alcohol.
I am expecting a few cracks about buying Malibu and shopping at Waitrose. Please don't disappoint

The cashier was right, but this is why the rule is so stupid.

There should be a disclaimer where if someone can prove they're over 25, they take responsibility for not giving it to a child to get shitfaced in a park, and the liability moves from the store to the customer.

Did your DD have anything with her name on? Surely it would have made sense to let you have it if you share a surname.

I get that the staff can get into trouble, but surely anyone illegally buying for a minor would make sure that the kid lurked outside, anyway.

I don't think anyone has said it isn't daft - just that it's not new and has been around for a long time. I remember my mum sending me to wait in the car as a teenager 20 years ago so she could buy wine

We call it Aldibu

Heh. I'm remembering ordering my first drink in a pub (I was 15). I ordered half a Guinness as a fifteen year old definitely wouldn't drink that. Fortunately I do like Guinness, but I don't think I had ever tried it before then so it was a bit of a gamble.

Public Service Announcement:

Long Island Iced Tea:
vodka, gin, tequila, white rum and triple sec with lemon and just enough Coke to tint it the colour of iced tea. So the Harvard students could get away with drinking undetected.

(until they tried to stand up)

Same thing happened to me and my young, but not underage niece🙄

Aldi asked for my ID a few years back. Think I was 50 at the time. You couldn't make it up🤣

I'm fascinated by the number of people on this thread asserting "it's the rules"

It may be supermarket policy dictated by an idiot, but it is certainly not the law. I'm a personal licence holder and think this "rule" is utter nonsense.

Malibu has no place in ANY cocktail, let alone a LIIT

Tesco did the same when I was with my younger brother. So bloody ridiculous!!

Surely if you were the one paying for the shopping, you were the one they were selling to? Absurd situation.

To be honest I suspect the only people trading standards go after are the small corner shop type owners who don't care about the rules rather than someone who made a mistake about whether someone is under 18 in a supermarket.

The think 25 thing is silly - the law says 18. And you can sell it from 18 too, so you have the ludicrous situation where someone who was 18 last week is asking a 24 year old (or indeed a young looking 34 year old) for ID.

As for Waitrose, they are ridiculous themselves. They have under 18s serving on the cigarette counter. You go there to make age-restricted purchases, so all the people there should be 18 or over. But I think they assume that everyone who shops there wants to hang around for ages while a supervisor comes over.

I also think all age restricted products should be labelled so you can make a decision whether to bother buying them or not, it's not always obvious.

It's a 'thing' in Tesco too. My 20-somethings learned to separate if one was buying alcohol and the other didn't have ID on them!

I had this before Christmas except dd is 21 however didn't have Id on her, she ran home to fetch it (it's 2 mins away the speed she runs) and with great delight through it down and demanded a discount (blue light discount). Ironically she had offered to go home for her id to get the discount but I had said don't bother originally. Shop assistant wasn't impressed, it was if she wanted us to not get our wine and whiskey

They are misapplying the law but, unfortunately, the more you fight back the harder they double down.

It is not illegal for a person over 18 to buy alcohol. It is not illegal for a person over 18 to buy alcohol while in the company of someone under 18. It isn’t even illegal to give a person over the age of five years alcohol in the family home!

In the run up to Christmas my son came with me to Tesco. I did a biggish shop which included a bottle of mulled wine and a bottle of Baileys (total was over £150). Cashier asked for ID. 19 yo DS (never drinks alcohol) showed his driving licence. Cashier turned to me his greying 54 yo mother and asked me for ID. DS laughed. I don’t carry my passport around with me so had none. Service was refused “but you can have the non alcoholic items”. I pointed out that the “challenge 25” policy is to be used when the purchaser appears to be under 25 not when they are clearly double that age. “No it’s the law that ALL alcohol purchasers have ID”. I said okay then and walked away from the checkout. Manager came after me and said I had to take the other items. I asked why? She couldn’t answer but said that as she could see I was over 25 she would let me buy all the items. I told her it was okay there are other supermarkets and went and did my shopping elsewhere, no ID requested (because I am ver obviously OLD) …AND it was cheaper!

Petty? Probably but I don’t expect my intelligence to be insulted like that.

No, this has been a thing for years. There was someone who posted on here a couple of years ago about not being able to buy paracetamol for her 19 year old daughter because she didn't have ID. I therefore don't know how you are meant to buy Calpol for a 3 year old....

The shop worker is meant to ask for ID or refuse to sell if they reasonably think that someone is buying it for an under 18 year old. It was clearly meant to catch the situation where an 18 year old is buying to share with their 17 year old friends. Not a mother buying a bottle of wine or two with the weekly shop. The supermarkets really need to sort out their training on this (as with many other things, like data protection, consumer protection law, you name it).

I had this when I was shopping in WR last week. It is just the rules and I doubt there was any judgement.

Doing the weekly shop and DS tagged along, they had to verify my age at the quick-pay and because DS was with me asked who it was for (it was actually for DH, who was at home) - I just said he's 18 (which he is and looks older if anything). They didn't bother asking for ID.

If a 18 year old was going to the shop to buy booze for a 15 year old they would know not to have them tagging along too, so the rule seems a bit pointless.

Telling you not to be so silly though - that is rude!!

An ad for Malibu popped up whilst reading this thread!!!
The rules are the rules OP, no matter how absurd they are.

I got questioned in CoOp when my 16 year old loaded bottles of alcohol free cider onto the belt.

Yeah the rule is a bit ridiculous in this case but the fines the cashiers (and the shop itself) can be landed with if they are caught selling alcohol to anyone underage or anyone buying it by proxy are extortionate. I know if I were to serve alcohol to anyone underage or someone who's buying for an underage person - then I could be faced with a £10,000 fine as well as losing my job obviously.

It doesn't sound like the cashier was particularly pleasant about it but seeing as your 15 year old did handle the alcohol she may well have had reason to believe that it was for her. Unfortunately people do regularly buy alcohol for their underage children, and believe me there is no one type of person who tries to do that so we all get judged equally. In this instance I know it's inconvenient but they were just doing their job.

@BuggerOffAndGoodDayToYou Amazon insist that everyone shows ID for alcohol deliveries regardless of age. I have no idea why.

I have bought booze with my teen in tow many a time in Waitrose and never been questioned. I have however never bought two bottles of Malibu and had my teen hand them to me. Suspect that’s where the wheels came off.

Long Island iced teas are disgusting at the best of times, it’s just a way to get pissed fast but putting Malibu in them is an abomination

Do people really buy their adult children alcohol for gifts?

OP, how were you paying? This is relevant because if you were paying on a credit card (as opposed to a debit card) the law states that you cannot have a credit card until you are 18. Therefore possession of a credit card is itself proof.

Are you the gift police?

I've bought whisky for my husband, if my son liked it I guess I would. Why not?