From the Publisher/ Arnold York
The three-strike rule doesn’t appear to apply in Malibu. Here, it’s one strike and you’re out. We’re running a story this week about two cashiers at our local Ralphs market who were summarily fired because they sold beer to a couple of Pepperdine students without first checking their IDs. Apparently, it didn’t seem to matter that these kids were regular customers of the Ralphs store, had been carded many times before, and the clerks knew them and believed they were over 21.
In fact, they had IDs, phony IDs that indicated they were over 21. The store rules appear to be that IDs must be checked each time a customer buys alcohol. And, as long as a customer shows an ID, even if fake, the store is covered, or at least that’s the way it was explained to our reporter. If you don’t require a customer to show their phony IDs, you’re in big trouble.
It apparently also didn’t matter to Ralphs that one clerk had been there for 25 years and had three children, and the other eight years because Ralphs has a zero tolerance rule.
Ralphs’ policy appears to be that if you sell beer to a minor, even once, you get fired. Now, I suspect that is not because Ralphs is a cruel, harsh and indifferent employer. It is, I suspect, because it doesn’t want any trouble with the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) and its liquor license. So the store sets up a system that pushes the responsibilities totally onto the clerks, and if one of them messes up, they just throw that clerk to the wolves and fire them. That, apparently, satisfies the ABC and gets the market chain off the hook.
Now, Malibu is a college town, and college kids drink. We may not like it, the schools may not like it, and the ABC may not like it, but it’s a fact of life. The kids at liberal colleges drink, and the kids at conservative colleges drink. We all know it. Who has a phony ID? I would guess pretty much every one of them. They’re easy to get, they’re relatively cheap, and with modern technology, it’s damn near impossible to spot a phony unless you’re a pro. They get them because even if the kids don’t drink, they need the IDs to get into the clubs. I had a phony ID when I was under drinking age. My boys, I know, had phony IDs although they denied it. And if most of you were honest about it, you would admit that you had phony IDs when you were in school.
The problem I have is not that campus drinking isn’t a problem, because it is. Nor that there has to be a system for trying to control it, because there should be. The problem I have is that the punishment, summarily firing these two sales clerks, is inappropriate to the crime. It’s not fair, and seems to indict them for being culprits when, in fact, what they did was simply careless. If they were fired for this, I would consider it to be the grossest miscarriage of justice.
I believe that everyone has to bear their share of the responsibility in this, and not just lay it on the clerks. The clerks have to bear their share for being careless. The kids who caused the damage to these clerks’ lives are responsible because they carried the fake IDs and tried to illegally buy alcohol. To them it was a lark, but to the clerks it had a profound impact. Pepperdine University is responsible because these kids are their students. The university ought to be talking to Ralphs about finding a solution, if there is a serious problem of kids buying alcohol at the store. The university should also ask Ralphs not to be harshly punitive with these clerks.
Ralphs has to carry its share of the responsibility. They can set up a better system for checking kids buying booze, like a special line, or a special ID that’s verifiable. All they do now is throw the responsibility onto the clerks, so it’s deniable if someone makes a mistake, which is nothing more than a way of covering their backsides with the ABC.
Pretending you’re solving a problem with a fake solution doesn’t really solve the problem. All it does is convince everyone the system is cynical and corrupt. It doesn’t have to be, and all the parties involved in this have to find a fairer solution.