To leave my £80 of shopping for the checkout assistant to put away

[mummytopebs]

Was in supermarket doing my shopping got to the till, had £80 worth of shopping in this was 4 cans of john smiths for dh. The drink was at the end of the shopping so everything had gone through, the checkout lady asked for id (I am 29 but do look young but not that young and god its 4 cans of beer with a full shop not some chavvy drink) I said i did not have any on me but i used to work in the said supermarket so said can you call my old manager who will verify my age. She tutted at me and called the line manager who i used to work for, she said yes she is definitly over age it was 6 years when i worked there and i was definitly over 18 then. The jobsworth sorry checkout lady still looked at me distastefully and the manager said it is up to the checkout lady though cos she originally akked for the id. I said can i have it then and she looked at me and went nah !!!!!!!! I said are you joking and hse said no i dont think you are over age!!!!!! So i said well i'll leave it then and she said ok and put the beer down and said thats £80.71p and i said no i will leave the lot - grabbed my dd and flounced out of the shop with an air of triumph.

I dont care if i had been shopping for an hour, i used to work in that supermarket and know she will have to put it all away ha ha ha

mintyy- write a complaint?? seriously?

Ok, yes it was annoying that the operator still refused to serve you after the manager confirmed your age, however, look at it like this:

2 men come into a pub. one looks 27/28. the other about 18/20. you id the younger one. he has none. the older guy turns and says 'oh, he is old enough, hes my work mate/works in the pub down the road/ is at uni'

would YOU serve him still? on the friends reccomendation? no....didn't think so.
If you WERE under age, and got caught, it would be the checkout operator that got a fine.
There are plenty of test purchases going on at the minute, especially in supermarkets, and the operator would have been severley reprimanded. The manager would run the risk of losing their personal licence (licence to sell alcohol)

I know its annoying....but if you are old enough to buy alcohol, you are old enough to have id. if you dont drive or have a passport, get a pass id card. there is no excuse!

As a licensee, I have been in this situation many a time, and if I have to look at someone twice, there is obviously a tiny bit of doubt, they HAVE to be id'd. No id, no drink. The woman was right.
She will actually have been laughing at you as you 'flounced' off.... thinking 'idiot, what is she thinking? shes not anything special, im not breaking rules for her!'

HerBeatitudeLittleBella its not about 'decent human kindness' or 'health and safety/insurance...its the LAW.

No, it's NOT the law to refuse to serve someone 18+ with alcohol if they don't have ID in a supermarket - it's the supermarket's rules. If this was the law, then everyone would know and carry id with them. The fact that there is so much confusion and lack of clarity on this issue shows that it has not been well-thought out or communicated to the consumers.

I am not obliged by law to carry ID in the UK, so I don't tend to, except if I have my photo driving licence in my purse. Said licence is however inaccurate as the address on it isn't correct, so what actually is it worth as ID?

It'll be interesting when the bill goes through that was mentioned earlier. I bet the supermarkets get challenged then.

The issue for me isn't the individual cashiers, but the way the supermarkets have chosen to impose this on the consumer without actually explaining in detail how it works. If I am buying alcohol and paying for it, I don't expect my 13 yo ds to be id'd or to have it insinuated that I am buying wine with possible intent to supply a minor, which I am legally allowed to do at home with a meal if I so choose.

MrsS - yes they do, and there has been an issue with Snooks in Tervuren as well and BSB kids. Funny how I never see the Belgian kids tanked up like the British ones, but then it's a more relationship with alcohol here...it's not seen as the demon drink and it is accepted that you can have a beer without being tanked up, and Carrefour don't ID you, or your child if you do the shopping and buy a bottle of wine with your child in tow after school.

What "people" - well me - can't understand is that the supermarkets and those working in them seem to think it's OK to take the law into their own hands. It is not.

ID is not the law, it's a initiative brought in by the retail industry to protect their own back.

We live in a democracy. It is the role of Parliament to make the laws. Parliament has decided that you can buy alcohol once you are 18. Parliament has decided that you can consume alcohol with a meal with adults once you are 16. Parliament has not legislated on the age that parents can serve alcohol to teenagers at home.

Parliament has not decided that if to a cashier in a bad mood takes against you for some reason, she can ask for ID, and then refuse to sell you alcohol. The supermarkets have decided this.

The OP in this thread is 29. How many people over the age of 25 carry age-related ID with them at all times? And why the fuck should they? This is not a police state, yet, despite Labour's best intentions. We are not required by law to ID ourselves at anyone's whim. The OP was doing something perfectly legal.

What seems stupid to me as well is that kids know that alcohol exists; my ds will bring me a bottle of wine or cider up from the cellar for cooking with, but that doesn't mean he is going to drink it.

If he puts a bottle of alcohol on the conveyor belt for me whilst unpacking the shopping, or pushes the trolley to the car which has alcohol in it, how is that supplying a minor with alcohol? He has touched the bottle, not the substance inside.

What would be far more effective imo is banning the sale of alcopops completely, then the kids that do drink might not want to.

It is Illegal to sell alcohol; to someone under 18 - that is the law as you see it.

Licensing laws state that if you have any doubt s to someone being old enough you have to ask for id and if id cannot be produced you have to refuse the sale or you will get prosecuted and fined whether the person is over age or not. Ok so the main issue seems to be that stores and pubs as a retail initative are trying to protect themselves from prosecution for asking for id from any one looking less than 25 years of age. I have seen teens that look a lot older than themselves and have to agree that challenge/think 25 is working better in stopping undrage purchase of alcohol than challenge/think 21 which was the previous bench mark where companies were still serving those under 18 cause they happened to look about 21 ish! Yess there is a grey area but once we have asked for ID we cannot back down regardless of how annoyed you get or how stupid you perceive us to be. Any manager called to a situation like this should back the staff member. Out of interest if you approach a different cashier and they had seen you Id'd and turned down should also refuse to serve you!

scaryteacher - you are right about there being confusion regarding this"rule". I have written to my MP - not to complain but to ask him to look into this and clarify it for me. I have said to him that as far as I am aware there is no law in place which states that an adult over the age of 18 has to carry ID with them, and therefore no law which states that we must all ahve passports and driving licences. I have also said that to my knowledge it is not against the law to serve alcohol to someone over the age 18 (with or without ID),and asked him to also check what would happen if the police were involved or if someone took, (eg Asda) to court for refusing to serve them alcohol because they were 34 and had no ID?

and so was the cashier -refusing to server her

"Licensing laws state that if you have any doubt s to someone being old enough you have to ask for id and if id cannot be produced you have to refuse the sale or you will get prosecuted and fined whether the person is over age or not."

Assuming mummyhill is correct then that clears that issue up. You were asking her to break the law and put her job on the line - no way would I do that.

It is not the law as I see it, it is the law that I am aware of.

If the licensing laws are indeed as you state, then that needs to be made clear to the public as it is NOT clear to those on this forum.

Are the licensing laws the same all over the UK or does it vary from place to place? If the latter, that needs to be amended so there is one comprehensive and explicable approach that the consumers can then be told about. It seems to have regional variations. I have never been ID'd or challenged about buying alcohol with my ds with me when I lived in Cornwall or Hampshire...but evidently others are in different parts of the UK. The laws need to be cohesive...until then you will get upset consumers no matter what who see the law in this case as misapplied (IDing pensioners) and an ass.

"Will licensees or members of a club be liable for prosecution for selling or
supplying alcohol to children if they have genuine reason to believe that a child is
over 18?
The Act provides that where a person is charged with the offence of selling, or a club supplying,
alcohol to a child under 18, it is a defence that he believed the individual was 18 or over and
either he had taken all reasonable steps to establish the individual's age, or that nobody could
reasonably have suspected that the individual was aged under 18.
The Act defines 'reasonable steps' as asking the individual for evidence of his age and that
evidence would have convinced a reasonable person. However, if the steps taken are shown to
be inadequate, for example the proof of age is obviously forged or belongs to someone else;
this defence will not be applicable."

www.greenwich.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/01512BA5-02B7-467D-8B5C-B9CBB57EAB15/0/Guid anceChildren.pdf

So I have moved sides of the fence again! Reasonable steps would include IMO asking your manager for authorisation!

Wee man has swine flu, aye. DD2 tested positive as well. But DH and DD1 were negative because they fell ill over 8 days ago and are already recovered.

But what strikes me is that if you want to 'tackle' underage drinking - lol, good luck! - instead of putting the onus on shops and then you have all these inconsistencies, why not just raise the fecking drinking age and make ID'ing for all the norm?

You know, show some balls and just make it 21 by law and then you won't have all this bollocks in the shops. It's just, 'Show your ID' and be done with it.

It's like smoking. They pussyfoot around with bans and whatnot and raising taxes and whatnot. Feck it, just make it illegal.

Why would they have to raise the age to do that? They could make ID compulsory without having to raise the age?
Sorry to hear you're all hit by swine flu - hope your household recovers quickly.

Unless they set it in stone - "Photo ID MUST be shown if requested, otherwise no sale" then I think approval from your line manager would count as reasonable evidence. As would approval from someone who claims to know the person and can themselves prove to be in the sort of job where you can sign passport aplications!
As would independently calling that person's employer and asking for proof.
I think in all those cases the 'reasonable' argument would hold up.

I did a big food shop & had a bottle of beer in it for DH. I don't have any ID (I'm 25 & don't look young by any means!) as I don't drive & I certainly don't carry my passport around with me at all times. Checkout girl asked for ID, I didn't have any so had to ring DH on my mobile to come in from the car & buy it himself.....only for the checkout girl to spy my wedding ring & say 'Oh it's ok I can see your married & you have to be 18 to get married so that's ok' & sold it to me I decided not to point out you can infact get married at 16 with parental consent

OP - Fab flounce, love it

"SPB - The point is, a cashier shouldnt have to put themselves in that position to have to defend themselves in the first place.

Which is why we operate the "no ID, no sale" policy if we feel the need to check someone age."

Sot hat's store policy - which presumably can be overriden by the store manager?

Nahui - I think the point is that it is so random who gets ID'd and who doesn't dependent upon the cashier's perception of your age (and sometimes as with OAPs they are way off beam thinking they are u18 or 25), that it is perceived to be unfair.

Either all the shops have to say that everyone 18+ must show form of photo id to buy alcohol irrespective of age, or they have to train the staff better to work out who is +25. It may not be fair on the cashier that the law is vague, but neither is it fair or right on the customer who wishes legitimately as an adult to buy a bottle of wine.

Do tell me how many prosecutions there have been for selling alcohol to a 29 year old without ID.

I had the same thing happen and it wasn't even me buying it was DH but she was so rude and wouldn't serve us, i complained to the customer services that their system was flawed, but they couldn't get their heads around it - feckin idiots. I am very on your behalf

If retailers really wanted to help reduce underage drinking they would, for example, refuse to sell alcopops. These are drunk predominantly by the very young. Yet they choose to carry on selling them, making loads of profit. To pretend to the government that they are responsible retailers capable of self-regulation they bring in ID25.

Truly responsible producers and retailers would never have permitted the marketing and sale of alcopops. The issues that these have caused were predicted when they were introduced (I campaigned against them in Parliament as a young person, with Liberal Democrat Alan Beith MP).

Why should we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of big business?