"Ma'am, I don't care WHO you are..."

[Nurian]

I once lived on a fort and worked in one of the groceries in there. The rule is you must be military and have a valid military ID to shop there. There's a nice guy by the front who checks ID. I will call him Henry.

One day as I'm working, I see a woman stroll into this store and try to walk by Henry's desk. The following ensued:

HENRY: Ma'am, may I see your ID.
LADY: It's not necessary. I'm (high ranking officer's wife).
HENRY: (patiently) I'm sorry, Ma'am. I cannot let you in without a valid military ID.
LADY: Are you joking? We've been stationed EVERYWHERE and I've NEVER had to show my ID to shop! (Right. Pull the other one. It has bells on.)
HENRY: (still patient) I can't account for anywhere else, but as you're about to enter the store under my responsibility, I need to see a valid ID.
LADY: (blowing up) I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! I AM (blah blah blah)'S WIFE!! I DON'T DESERVE TO BE TREATED LIKE THIS!! I WILL HAVE YOU FIRED!! DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM? CAN'T YOU SEE THAT I DON'T NEED AN ID???
HENRY: (finally showing the smallest amount of irritation) Ma'am, I don't care WHO you are. You want in? I need some ID. If the president came in here, I'd ask for his ID. Now either show me your ID or leave because if you do anything else, I'm calling the MP's.


She left at the point, completely red faced. Henry just recomposed himself and he was fine for the rest of the day. I never did see her again but as long as I worked there, Henry was there. Looks like she was a liar as well as a blowhard.

[MoonChild2007]

Good for "Henry" to stand up for himself. i get that crap when I used to work as a teller.

[Belari]

What a tool. I hate that attitude. "I'm special because of my husbands accomplishments so the rules don't apply to me." Kudos to Henry for standing up to her.

[Captain Card]

What Bases are these? Overseas bases? I've been to quite a few miltary PXs and they had me show at checkout unless I was entering from a civilian area. (Navy Mall on Oahu had a food court open to the public but the store wasn't).

[Chromatix]

The real point is, Henry doesn't know that she's <high ranking officer's wife> until he sees her ID - so her simply telling him isn't going to work!

[Gabrielle Proctor]

I think she was definately lying. If her husband was a high-ranking official, she would have learned the rules by now.

[earl colby pottinger]

Hots spots

Question: Can I assume that if she tried this bluff in any military base that are presently in the 'hot spots' of the middle east that she would not even get to walk away? That female MPs would insist in doing a body search of anyone who tried so hard to get at one of the food supplies without proper ID?

[Nurian]

Actually, this was stateside in a Commissary. The heck of it is, I'd seen her on base and knew who she was. She was a bitch then, too.

[Iris Kojiro]

"Good day, ma'am. Please give your husband my condolences."

[Belari]

"Good day, ma'am. Please give your husband my condolences."

*snerk* Consider this stolen and added to my list of mental retorts.

[Bramblerose]

My limited experience-

I never did get to Sill's commissary

Chaffee- if you were on base, you were OK. Have the ID to pay.

Scott- ONce more, you had to have ID to get on base at all. I don't think you had to card your way in, needed ID to pay

Leonard Wood- pre 9-11 base was open, commissary required card to get it, post 9-11 base required id, at some point the card check to enter Commissary disappeared, needed card to pay. The Nat'l Guard twice a month card went the way of the dinosaur finally.

I miss the commissary..... Where else can you buy Beans, green?

[Nurian]

I miss the commissary..... Where else can you buy Beans, green?

Me, too. It had everything you could want, including a lot of import you couldn't find most other places. Glad they did away with the bi-monthly paper. It didn't affect me so much as I still had my dependent card while I was in the Guard but some good soldiers were denied because of that.

In the past now

[Hobbs]

Actually, this was stateside in a Commissary. The heck of it is, I'd seen her on base and knew who she was. She was a bitch then, too.

well, haven't met any bitchy air force wives (yet, :cringe: ) but i've met some 'interesting' girlfriends, ahem.

oh, and female POCs are...also interesting.

[BJD]

HENRY: (still patient) I can't account for anywhere else, but as you're about to enter the store under my responsibility, I need to see a valid ID.

Somebody buy Henry a drink of his choice and send me the bill!

Back when I was an 18 y/o (very early 80's) I worked as a Security Guard for a while. One of my first jobs was at a convention center during an electronics expo. I was charged with making sure everybody through 'that particular door' had 'that particular colour of floor pass'.

During the course of the day one of the groups I turned away for not having passes was four Asian gentleman. Two were rude to me, one tried to bargain with me, and the older gentleman merely appeared to be amused at the actions of the other three. It ended when the older gentleman said something in Japanese that shut the other three up.

They left and about ten minutes later were back with proper passes so I of course let them in without any further thought to the incident. (Probably less than 30% of the people trying to get through to that part of the expo had the correct passes so we didn't even have to keep any 'Entry Refused' logs or anything. It was truly brain numbing work but it paid the rent.)

About a month later, and out of the clear blue, my employer questioned me at length about the incident and once he was satisfied that I had kept my cool and not done anything embarassing for the security firm, he showed me a letter from a VP of Sony Canada (the older gentleman in the foursome) thanking my boss for having staff that were willing to stand their ground and not let just anybody into the VIP section of the expo.

[trinnyg]

high ranking.

Thus reasons why I like red tape on Manager accounts.

I have the power to refuse adding an application or ID for said president of company if he does not have proper authorization.

The best was asked to move a database that had a top down permission level. I moved a database only out of the middle of the chain and did not search for any missing ID's.

I get the following from the Assistant President of said company (you know what a bull in a china shop is like well this is "name" with out his id. I had three managers back me up telling me that I did everything right and it is not our job to read your mind to find out where in the database you may be logging in if you only ask me to move database XXX.

Too bad = Management sometimes means that I can walk on everyone. I want to take high ranking official's wife out to the middle of some fishing trip away from her comforts of home and see how high ranking she is now. Her husband probably had more respect than she did.