No Chardonnay Today

I was watching the self-checkouts at Walmart when my handheld alerted me about an alcohol sale I had to check.

I walk over to the U-scan that had the alert to see a college-aged boy and an older lady. The boy had his wallet out and his bank card in his hand, so as I scanned it into the machine, I asked him for his ID. He handed it to me with no issues, and I could only stare at it.

Me: “You… You aren’t twenty-one.”

Boy: “Yeah. I’m buying my mom’s groceries for her birthday.” *He motions to the older lady.*

Me: “Okay, but… I can’t sell you alcohol if you aren’t twenty-one.”

I failed the age verification on my handheld, so that it voids the wine from his order.

Boy: “So, can I still buy everything else?”

Me: “Yes…? You just can’t buy the wine.”

This is when his mother finally says something.

Mother: “Okay, I’ll buy the wine separately.”

Me: “I can’t sell this to you since he was trying to buy it and he’s underage.”

They seem to understand as they make no arguments. I head back to the center of the U-scans so I can more easily watch them all when I see that boy and his overflowing cart of groceries stop just outside the self-checkout area and wait. When I turn to look, I see the woman heading back into the store in the direction of our alcohol aisle.

Oh jeez.

I head up to customer service to let my manager know to keep an eye out for her (so that she can let both the cashiers and the U-scan host on the other side of the store know she’d been denied already) before heading back to my U-scan area.

I’m just checking the IDs of four college-aged kids for an alcohol sale when the woman walks into my self-checkout area with a new bottle of the same type of wine and scans it.

Me: “Ma’am, you’ve already been denied alcohol. I can’t sell this to you.”

Mother: “But I’m over forty!”

Me: “It doesn’t matter. Your son tried to buy that same wine but was underage. I believe him that he was buying you groceries, but I have to go by what it looks like, which is that someone underage tried to buy wine, and couldn’t, so now you’re buying it for him.”

Mother: “So I can’t buy wine?”

Me: “Not at this Walmart today, no.”

I take the bottle, and she leaves, her son following after her with their cart. The college kids just looked at me, kind of dumbfounded, and asked me if she really just tried that, to which I could only shrug. 

Now, I fully believe that the kid was her son and was buying her groceries for her birthday. They did look similar, and he did seem utterly shocked that I couldn’t sell him alcohol if he was buying it for someone old enough who was even there, so I could verify their age. 

If you want to ask why I wouldn’t sell to the mom anyway as a separate transaction, there are several reasons.

Even though I believed the story, it still could have been a lie and a cover-up.

In my state, buying alcohol for someone who has been denied for any reason is a third-party sale and therefore Illegal. Even though it “was really for her”, it didn’t change that he tried and failed to buy it first, and only then did she want to pay for it separately.

This Walmart was a ten-minute drive and had several bus routes connecting it to a college. As such, excise (basically state alcohol police) was often in plain clothes to catch third-party sales, students with fake IDs, and people who tried to come into the store multiple times to get around the amount of beer and wine we could legally sell any individual in one day, because of the type of liquor license we held. At the time this was happening, I’d been told to be extra vigilant since excise was probably in the store.

But hey… At least I get a story about how someone underage tried to buy wine without even attempting to fake they were old enough.