Store sells booze to minor

[NorahNorah]

What would you do?
Spirits purchased by u18 with someone elses Id .. a child ends up in hospital.
Not about blame , that said , let's "keep it real" and even if no one ended up in hospital ( or worse ) what action would you take?

I would be angry at my child for being duplicitous and daft.

I'm really not @TheaBrandt I'm not that cynical - but if the kids can't help themselves, aren't we going to help them? Maybe it was somone's first day on the til, and they just didn't spot it - store manager might be filling in, and has to answer their mobile and is distracted - whatever it cvould be, that's the very first point at which an adult might be able to step in - and I say, might, because sometimes kids themselves are on the tils

We would be angry with the teen but proportionally. Would be some consequences then would treat it as a learning experience. It perfectly demonstrates why actually the law is right on this they are not old enough to drink responsibly. They need to take responsibility for their actions. Flinging wild accusations about at the shop / wider society undermines that. I hope you haven’t said that in front of the child? Otherwise the lesson is “let’s see who we can blame” rather than something more valuable.

How old are the teens involved 14 or so I would speak to the store manager. 16+ kid gets a lecture on drinking to excess and we move on.

Would make the teen drop some sweet treats off for the crew and A&E. We all have to grow up and learn how to behave this is just one of those times that something has gone wrong personally I don't think it's any worse than falling off a mountain bike or other risky hobbies.

If it wasn't bought in a supermarket it would have likely come from someone's drinks cabinet anyway. I really wish they had some kind of graduated license for alcohol say pubs at 16/17, cans/single serves at 18 and spirits at 21.

You write in quite an unclear convoluted way so it’s hard to understand quite what happened here. Are you the parent of the teen who ended up in hospital?
You say the others won’t name who bought the booze yet you know exactly which store it was purchased from? How come? Surely if you approach the store you’d have to say who actually bought it for them to know which cashier sold it.
If you don’t know who bought it then how do you know it wasn’t someone who was over 18? And if they had someone else’s ID and resembled them in appearance (eg an older brother) then they have done as much as they can, unless the person in question clearly looks a lot younger than 18. It’s quite hard to determine age - easy enough if you know the person and how old they are but there could be relatively little setting apart someone who is 17 from someone who is 21. That is why IDs exist and if someone presents one and it looks like them then you would usually accept it.
As for catching them out - normally people would memorise the fake dob and would confidently say “yes I was born in 2005” or whatever. How much more can you catch them out?

Totally the fault of the teenager. Problem these days is the parents always look to blame someone else for their child’s irresponsible behaviour they knew what they were doing so they should take the blame 100%. Not the shop worker.

Yes absolutely. These kids fraudulently obtained the booze by tricking the low paid worker into thinking they were over 18. One of the idiots drank too much and put a burden on our already stretched NHS and now the parent of this delightful specimen wants to blame the shop.

Children aren’t allowed to sell alcohol so it would have been an adult. If it’s a sainsbury or whatever I doubt the store manager was present and got distracted or whatever twee story you’re weaving in your head. It would have been someone on around minimum wage, probably working long hours in a tedious job. They’d have no vested interest in selling alcohol to kids as they don’t get commission on sales or anything. Chances are they asked for ID and were shown what looked like legitimate ID. Now you want to blame them for not being telepathic. Have you made a monetary donation to the hospital that treated your drunken child, OP?

Why all the blame OP?
kids mess up, parents miss a trick, scary stuff happens.
thankfully sounds like everyone is ok so why go on the attack?
perhaps parents need to think about why a young person would drink themselves unconscious (though tbf it’s often just not knowing limits), young people need to be told off, and supported to experience alcohol in a moderated and safe way.

Can you say how old the kids are? Because "the kids can't help themselves, aren't we going to help them?" is a ridiculous sentiment if they were old enough to pass with an ID. Mine had lessons on drugs and alcohol at school from 11/12 never mind what we taught them at home. So they know, trust me they know, of the dangers - yet they still did it.
You say you want them educated by the Police or a Social worker - be lectured for a day but no fine or penalty. That's the parent's job. You lecture them, you punish them. And if you can you agree with the other parents to do the same thing. But ultimately you know what your kid did (were they the drinker, the buyer, the ID lender or the cheer squad?) and it's down to you to deal with them.

It's really hard to understand some of your replies OP. At the end of the day it's happened and you can't change it, so move on. Give your teen a bollocking (I assume it is your child as you're so invested). Hopefully they will learn from this. Be vigilant in future about who they're with and where they're going. Reiterate how stupid it is to get drunk to that level, and how many other people weren't getting care in A&E because your child was being dealt with. And let it go with the store. The person buying alcohol and the person who handed over their ID are the two main ones at fault here.

It will most likely be an isolated incident. I ended up in a similar situation when I was underage. I never ever got that drunk again. It was idiotic and stupid, but something that many of us do growing up.

Op has been asked several times re age of her dc, and never responded, which has led me to believe they are of upper teen age so 16/17.

that is such a good idea @sleepyscientist 🙏🏽🙏🏽

Looking on the bright side they won’t do that again in a hurry!

I'm first to say that I don't know what happened, and what I have is a piece here or there from this person and that - as soon as they saw the potential ramifications, they circled together and wouldnt say anything about each other.

This not accusation, i'm not laying blame or pointing fingers - I want to talk this through at every level we are able, be better informed and hopefully of better service to the coming generation.

If things seem ambiguous, it's because the specifics only matter up to a point. For me any way, it's about how they access it, what they do with it and how they handle themselves - collectively - as a group concerned with each-others best interests
and how, WE, handle ourselves as a community - the seniors, the elders, the ones with the knowledge, with the experience - it us on us to do the best for the coming generation.

What kind of ID is irrelevant if there's no screening process.
Who is responsible? No one and everyone.
We can't argue it's solely them, that nobody forced "them" to buy it, nobody forced them to drink and nobody forced them to drink so much - because we know full well that peer presure will make people do much, much more - all in the name of being accepted.
And that, is on all of us.
We're all posting, many repeatedly using the word, "child" - that's perhaps where the whole thing starts and finishes.

So - given that happened, will continue to happen, all over the country, for people of all ages - what we can we do in our own lives to make change?
That's the biggie ✌🏽

All under 18

OP, are you in corporate management by any chance? The way you write is very difficult to access and rather off-putting. I feel like I'm trying to decipher a message from our CEO about the business aims.

it is v hard to understand what you mean, or what exactly happened.
how can you be sure that the person whose ID was used did not buy the alcohol himself and then give it to the others ?

also how do you know that you too if presented with that ID by that person, assuming they are different, would not have accepted it.
in short, stop trying to blame the shop or shop asst.
i used to enforce some of this legislation and prosecute where appropriate; i expected to be all, report it immediately,
on reading the title.
but on further reading, i am not.

The young person and the person who gave them ID were in the wrong. The shop wasn't. They showed ID!

All stores in the UK which sell alcohol operate a Challenge 25 policy. This means if someone looks under 25 we ask for ID. 25 is a far better age than 18, as many 12 year olds can look 18. So if someone looks young, they get asked for ID. We get training four times a year on how to ID, our shop gives a quiz along with the training programme and you have to get it all right or you go back onto lockdown and aren't allowed to sell any age check products until you have satisfactorily completed your training.

The penalties for selling underage alcohol are HUGE, both for the store and for the individual employee, so unless the fake ID was very very good indeed, and the person buying the alcohol looked well over age, it really comes down to the shop. Obviously the child shouldn't have had fake ID, the intent to buy alcohol was there, but the store could and should have refused to sell alcohol on the grounds that they didn't believe this person was over age.

As I say, if the ID was EXTREMELY good they may get a pass. But we are taught to double check if it looks at all unlikely and to get a manager to check for us if we are unsure. Shops have been closed down over this.

Blame lies with the parents if you're looking to blame someone. That a child was able to get to the shops and then consume the alcohol shows a lack of proper supervision 💁🏽‍♀️

Why do you insist on writing in riddles? It’s really annoying.
Was your kid the drunk one?
was it a fake ID or someone else’s ID?
How old is your kid and the others? We know they are under 18 but that could mean 14 or it could mean 17.

I really hope that the police pursue criminal action against the two youths.

'Give out to' or giving out is an Irish expression and the OP likely did not know what it meant.