Obsessive Rep Point Checkers Club, v2

OK, I have to share this 'cause it just struck me as really weird.

So I went to MickeyD's for lunch 'cause I'm playing their Monopoly game and I'm standing there. In the line is an Amish family. Now seeing the Amish in and around town isn't that unusual, but somehow seeing an Amish father ordering a happy meal for his kids just really struck me as weird, y'know?

DeleyanLee said:

OK, I have to share this 'cause it just struck me as really weird.

So I went to MickeyD's for lunch 'cause I'm playing their Monopoly game and I'm standing there. In the line is an Amish family. Now seeing the Amish in and around town isn't that unusual, but somehow seeing an Amish father ordering a happy meal for his kids just really struck me as weird, y'know?

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that

Last time I was carded was three years ago.

But I'm 35.

you must look better than your avvie

You sure they were Amish and not Mennonites?

They look about the same... not saying the Amish wouldn't be in a McD's anyway (I can't think of a reason why they wouldn't, after all) but that it might more likely be a group of Mennonites than their more conservative brethern.

I don't get carded very often, but I think it has more to do with the fact that I'm usually accompanied by four kids and look like I'm at the end of my rope.

Cella said:

you must look better than your avvie

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It's amazing what wiping off the Redi Whip will do for one's appearance.

Funny carding story.

So my sister and her new husband decide to build a bar in the basement just before Xmas. I was 29 at the time (many moons ago). I wasn't a drinker at the time (still amn't by most people's assessment) so I didn't have a clue what they'd need. Honestly, neither did they, but what they wanted was stuff for their bar.

I went to a booze store and looked at everything and was totally overwhelmed by it all, so what I decided to do was buy lots and lots of the little sample bottles for them. As I'm picking them out (more by what's pretty than what's inside the bottle--yeah, I don't know diddle), I laugh and tell my ex (who's watching the kid outside the store--kids weren't allowed in, state law) that it's my first time buying booze. So when I go up with all the tiny bottles in a basket, the guy cards me. He sees my age and goes completely red in the face.

"I'm so sorry, but when you said it was your first time buying, I thought you'd just turned 21!"

It's a good laugh.

good afternoon, reppers!

There's the Grim Reaper and then there's the Grinning Reppers.

writeronfire said:

There's the Grim Reaper and then there's the Grinning Reppers.

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And the difference is---what?

I don't get carded anymore. I think maybe it's that single white hair in my beard. :/

What's odd is that I used to get carded for cigarettes fairly often, then I'd never get carded for alcohol. I have no idea why.

Quite possibly because of the nature of the fines and the revenue. I worked for a place that sold cigarettes, and we were under *strict* orders to card. Selling either alcohol or tobacco to a minor is of course against the law, but I think tobacco carries a harsher social stigma, and so is enforced a lot more often. If you get caught selling it to them you lose your ability to sell them, and it's a HUGE source of revenue.

... but that's an educated guess.

morning reppers

Morning reaper (as in the grim).

slcboston said:

Quite possibly because of the nature of the fines and the revenue. I worked for a place that sold cigarettes, and we were under *strict* orders to card. Selling either alcohol or tobacco to a minor is of course against the law, but I think tobacco carries a harsher social stigma, and so is enforced a lot more often. If you get caught selling it to them you lose your ability to sell them, and it's a HUGE source of revenue.

... but that's an educated guess.

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That's entirely possible. I've lived in a shit load of places across the US and it's happened in most of them. In the area of TN where I settled after the army, though, they seem to be doing stings on alcohol a lot more than smokes lately. They're seriously cracking down on underage alcohol sales in the past couple of years. It's a big issue where I live, I guess. Three stores within a short drive of my house had their licenses to sell alcohol suspended recently. :/

kct webber said:

That's entirely possible. I've lived in a shit load of places across the US and it's happened in most of them. In the area of TN where I settled after the army, though, they seem to be doing stings on alcohol a lot more than smokes lately. They're seriously cracking down on underage alcohol sales in the past couple of years. It's a big issue where I live, I guess. Three stores within a short drive of my house had their licenses to sell alcohol suspended recently. :/

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Just 'cuz I send my kid to that store to get me a beer and a pack of smokes, suddenly I'm a bad mother and bad for business. (kidding)

I have no idea what is enforced more, I just know when I was young, it was entirely too easy to get cigarettes and alcohol, and I really can't imagine it's much more difficult now.

I remember being sent ot the corner shop for my mother's smokes when I was just seven or eight years old. Of course, that's back in Ye Olde Days.

Now I would love to be carded for cigarette or alcohol.

I think it's harder to get them from legit sources. I know in the past there was less emphasis on carding, and in many places there was some discretion on the end of the individual vendor. In other words, it was up to the judgement of the seller if a person looked old enough to decide whether to card them.

Now the letter of the law has largely undone that discretion. You simply *have* to card, and do so without fail, barring fairly obvious indicators that a person is of age.

Which, yeah, like KCT, would include the growing percentage of gray in my hair.

The cops in and around Clarksville, TN have been using their version of secret shoppers to sting stores for a while now--hiring under age people to go buy beer. Or maybe it's just people who look underage? Not sure. Anyway, they've caught quite a few and suspended their licenses. They're really cracking down on it.

When I was younger, we never tried to buy it ourselves, we just got someone of legal age to do it for us. It's that easy. Half the time, we'd walk up to a perfect stranger and ask him to get it for us and he would. It really is sad.

slcboston said:

Which, yeah, like KCT, would include the growing percentage of gray in my hair.

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It's only one hair! One, dammit!

Yeah, you're right, I think. In most places now, the laws have gone from 'don't sell to anyone under age' to 'you must card if a person looks under <whatever age>' so the discretion on the part of the store, or the teller is gone. And in some places, the law has gone as far as 'you must card EVERYONE.' So I hear. I've no proof.

When I was fresh out of high school, my best friends had an apartment. Across the hall from them lived a guy who was a year older than us (19) and was so prematurely bald, he looked 35. He'd started to go bald when he was 15 and used it to great advantage, charging underaged kids to buy for them. From what he said, his profits from high school paid his first two years of college.

Can't help but wonder if people like him isn't the reason why carding is so vigorous now.

kct webber said:

The cops in and around Clarksville, TN have been using their version of secret shoppers to sting stores for a while now--hiring under age people to go buy beer. Or maybe it's just people who look underage?

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That's interesting... I'm not sure they can send in underage operatives without that coming into the category of "endangering the welfare of a minor" and if they only look underage then technically the store's would have a legal out unless the law specifically states they *must* card.

might also depend on whether the legal age is 21 or 18. Because if it is 21, that would give the cops some wiggle room.

Almost certainly. I knew a kid like that as well. His name was Dave. He started balding at 14, and he could grow a full-on dark, full (and fabulous) beard. He could buy alcohol without question from any store he walked into.

kct webber said:

It's only one hair! One, dammit!

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only one?

bastard.