"Get yourself fired for me! Come on, help a friend out!"

[customersruinmylife]

A group of five came to the bar, a mixture of men and women. They had quite a broad age range, with the leader (the SC in the tale) looking like he was in his late fifties, a couple of them in the late thirties range, one late twenties, and the final girl I wasn’t sure about. She looked really young compared to the others, and I wasn’t sure if she was old enough.

SC: Hi. I want three pints of lager, a double vodka and orange and a large glass of white wine.
Me: Sure. Can I just ask if the young lady there has some I.D on her?

The girl went wide eyed and frightened.

SC: Haha. She’s only seventeen! She won’t be able to get served.

I nearly facepalmed. I decided to try and remain polite.

Me: I’m sorry, but the legal drinking age is 18. We do not allow the sale of alcohol to under 18 year olds.
SC: Oh....*very long pause*...did I say seventeen? I meant nineteen! Yeah, she’s nineteen! Aren’t you?

She keenly nodded her head.

Me: OK. Can I see the I.D then please?
SC: I told you, she doesn’t have it.
Me: Right. Well I am afraid I will be unable to serve you then. We have a very strict policy on I.D here, and without it I cannot serve your group.
SC: *to girl* Go find a seat. *Turns back to me* Right, can I have that order now please?
Me: But she’s still here...
SC: Yeah, but she’s not at the bar being served. I will give it to her when she gets to the table, and that’s the end of it.
Me: I can’t allow that to happen. Without I.D none of you can be served.
SC: Seriously?
Me: Yes.
SC: You’re serious?
Me: Yes.
SC: Why do you care? Surely you were seventeen once! You know what it’s like! You must have tried being served at a bar while you were underage!
Me: I am sorry. I am just following policy and the law.
SC: Come on. One friend to another. It’s not going to affect you, is it? Let’s just pretend we didn’t have this conversation.
Me: I can’t do that.
SC: Yes you can. It’s really easy. Come on. Help us out.
Me: I really can’t. We have undercover stings coming in all the time checking to see if we are being vigilant when asking people for I.D. How do I know you aren’t one of those? I cannot take that risk, not for anything.
SC: Look, just do as I ask, OK?
Me: I cannot do that. I will not risk losing my job for this.
SC: We’re not a sting! I promise!
Me: I’m not doing it. Plus, now other customers and co-workers have heard this conversation. They report me and its bye bye job.

He tried to stare me out.

SC: Well, we’re going somewhere else then. And do you know how much money I have in my wallet?
Me: I don’t-

I was actually going to say “I don’t care” rather than “I don’t know” but he cut me off.

SC: I have £300. And I was going to spend every last penny of it in here. We didn’t have any plans to go somewhere else. Now we’re going to have to go down to *rival pub* and they are going to get our money.
Me: *complete and utter blank stare*
SC: So I bet you will make employee of the month once the boss finds out you lost this place £300. Really smart move there.
Me: But at least I will be able to wake up in the morning knowing I still have my job.
SC: But you lost good custom. You did not provide good customer service.
Me: Providing that level of customer service, i.e breaking the law, will not pay my bills at the end of the month. I would lose my job.
SC: You don’t seem to realise how much money I was willing to spend in here.
Me: I don’t make commission, I get paid by the hour regardless of how much customers spend in here. It doesn’t affect me at all.
SC: *frozen to the spot*
Me: If that’s everything...
SC: We’re going to *rival bar*!

They left. I got on the phone and called rival bar to let them know they were coming.

[Slayer]

Lmao at the end. I would have called, too XD

Don't get why people try and insist on others breaking the law for them. Makes no sense to me.

I get it often at work where people try to "bargain" and ask for no taxes. I always have to say no three different ways before they stfu. And that's just taxes.

Alcohol has it so much worse.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Some people just love to grab the Idiot Ball in the presence of alcohol, don't they?

Granted, they usually don't need booze to be idiots...

[Estil]

SC: Come on. One friend to another. It’s not going to affect you, is it?

Well, if she happened to have been sent undercover by a police officer to test our ID compliance, then yes it very much affects me. Sorry, Charlie.

[rose_metal_nz]

Hahahaha you handled that just perfectly. Hope they got denied at the rival pub too!

[BrenDAnn]

ID or GTFO. No in between. Also, how stupid are people to bring the UNDERAGE person they are providing for up to where they are buying whatever they're providing with them? You absolutely did the right thing, right down to calling the other pub. Bravo!!

[Pixilated]

You handled that extremely well! Either they were undercover stings or some truly, incredibly stupid people!!

Did you ever hear back from the other pub about whether they showed up?

[Greenday]

Um, if a bar gets caught serving someone underage, fines are a lot more 300 pounds. Not to mention you can lose your liquor license which can cost over $100,000. So losing 300 pounds really doesn't seem like a big deal.

[South Texan]

I got on the phone and called rival bar to let them know they were coming.

The vindictive part of me had been hoping you would do just that.

[downforit2008]

I've seen that all the time. Stupid customers trying to get you to bend the law just because they're planning on spending such-and-such-amount of money there. It isn't like I get paid on commission per sale made either! Whether they spend 5 bucks on beer or not, there won't even be any change to my paycheck.

2 years ago, it was a hot summer day and I was resting for a moment after pushing in a bunch of straggling shopping carts. My boss encourages us to rest for a few minutes because a bunch of carts aren't worth risking our health over in the 100-degree heat. A teenage boy who was clearly 15 or 16 approached me with a proposition.

SC: Can I give you this ten dollars so you can go inside and buy me a pack of cigarettes?
Me: (sizing the guy up and knowing how young he is)Why don't you just do it yourself?
SC: I uh...don't have my ID on me. Come on, help a customer out.
Me: Look, I know the rules. You have to be 19 years old to buy cigarettes here(Utah state law)and you clearly aren't 19.
SC: That's why I'm asking YOU to do it for me. Come on, no one will know.
Me: I will know, and I'm not going to be putting my job at risk and being arrested just because I'm buying tobacco products for minors. So why don't you just go home and come back in three or four years when you ARE of legal age to buy them?
SC: You can't talk to me like that. I'm a customer!
Me(stares him down):You're just a kid. And that excuse isn't going to work on me.
SC(starts throwing a fit and screaming in my face):THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT!!! ALL I ASKED YOU DO IS ONE SIMPLE THING AND YOU WON'T DO IT! I SHOULD NEVER COME BACK HERE AGAIN! YOU'RE JUST A WIMP WHO IS AFRAID TO DO ANYTHING I ASK!
Me:(turning red in the face and snapping back)If you don't get out of my face, something really bad is going to happen to you, you little punk. Now get the hell away from me!

SC retreats, cursing up a storm and shrieking to his waiting friends about how bad the service is at my store. An assistant manager was coming off his lunch and going through the parking lot, and he asked me what all the commotion was about. I told him that I refused to take a minor's request in buying cigarettes for him and jokingly said, "Because I didn't do what the customer wanted, that should put me in big trouble with the managers!"
The AM laughed at me and said I did a good job, and because of what I did, it's going to GUARANTEE that I have a job the next morning. He said that there's a bunch of punks that do the same thing every week and this isn't the first time he's heard about it.

I remembered this incident because not only did I put it down word-per-word in my journal, but also put it in my memory bank on something that the customer is NOT always right on!

[XCashier]

When are people going to realize, you have to be of legal age AND have ID to be served at a bar!

I love how he's all, "help a friend out!" Yeah pal, a true friend wouldn't put their friends in such a spot. No amount of money, cajoling, wheeling-dealing or threatening is going to make a server risk unemployment, a hefty fine and a jail sentence! The law is the LAW.

[HotelMinion]

even if it weren't aganist the law i still wouldn't. i don't serve douchebags, especially alcohol. > gets them douchy-er.

[Kereminde]

. . . they drummed into us the two times I had to take Alcoholic Beverage training for being a server, very hard. "If you have any doubts, ask for ID. If you don't get to see ID, they don't get to have their drinks. If you, by some terrible temporary lost of sanity, serve anyway you will lose your job. To start with. You can be fined a lot of money. You could possibly do time."

"So no matter how much they offer to tip you, ask yourself if it's worth your employment and a trip to a jail cell." *beat* "And realize they probably wouldn't have held up their end either, and might just report you themselves."

[Moosenogger]

He's bitching about her having to wait another year to drink legally?! We can't drink until 21 here - 18 is nothing. I wonder how that SC would have reacted if you told him you were contacting the police. He was trying to purchase alcohol for a minor...

[Opalin]

"Only 300? Seriously? Sir, that is far below the 10 million that I would require, half entirely for myself because I'd never be able to get a job again after blowing this one, the other half to pay off a lawyer, bribes to the county, the bar... How much would you get? Oh, about 20$ worth of cheap beer, why?"