The date: December 16, 2011
The place: Lander, Wyoming
The situation: Lander Police officers were conducting a Compliance Check that day to see whether various restaurants and stores would sell liquor to a minor. Everyone knows the rules, and the employers, at least, are aware of the fines. Now they are even more aware.
Police found that the following businesses failed: Safeway, Mr. D’s, Pizza Hut, and Maverick.
The test is done by sending a minor with a typical minor’s driver’s license into the establishment to purchase alcohol. If they are asked for their identification, they provide it. If they are allowed to make the purchase despite their young age, then the individual cashier gets charged with providing alcohol to a minor. This leads to a fine and often means that the cashier loses his or her job.
Now, over at Sweetwater Fleet and Beverage, Ron Hansen has fired two employees for selling tobacco and alcohol to minors since 1998. That’s not too bad of a record. He watches out for people making repeat visits, large groups, and suspicious cell phone users. He admits that fake identification and difficulty guessing a person’s age make it harder to tell whom to card. "We card anyone under the age of 30. Unfortunately, that has led to some lost sales and upset consumers but at the end of the day I am okay watching a sale walk out the door," said Hansen.
He trains all of his employees as well.
Hansen follows the rules, but he still questions whether these Compliance Checks will eliminate the problem or not. He thinks it’s like applying a band-aid to a gaping would, and it will not fix the problem.
Still, some counties such as Laramie are considering making alcohol-serving training mandatory for all people who work with it. Not only would this include carding for age, but also checking to see if people are too inebriated to continue to be served in a restaurant or bar setting.
