This is really not important in life - at all, but was the topic of discussion in our family tonight.
Local Italian restaurant gives the birthday person a free meal on their birthday. Today was S’s 26th birthday and 5 of us were going out to dinner. He picked this Italian restaurant - not because of the free meal, but once he picked it he remembered they offer this birthday perk.
Just before leaving for the restaurant, he couldn’t find his wallet. We looked for a bit - but no wallet found (he did find it after we returned from dinner). No big deal I told him, "don’t worry we can afford to pay for your meal. "
At the restaurant upon being seated the waitress asked if we had been there before and right away she asked, “what are “we” celebrating tonight?” We said S’s birthday. She said “oh if it’s your actual birthday you get your meal free!” S said he knew but he misplaced his wallet and didn’t have it with him. He said, “but I can show you my Facebook page” (where his birthday is posted and he had lots of birthday greetings. He was kind of joking about it but also thought they might accept that. Nope. She said she would ask her manager - and we actually don’t feel confident she did - but she said they could only do it if he had a driver’s license. No note of this in the menu that apparently says “birthday perks”.
No big deal but I just thought his offer was sort of a good substitute. Since he wasn’t driving that night or paying, should we assume that people are carrying their wallet or purse? I get not just honoring someone’s supposed word, but he COULD prove it was his birthday…should they have honored it???
We happily paid for the entire meal but have to say our waitress experience overall was subpar!
I can see why they have that policy. And you can enter your birthday as anything on facebook. I know about 5 people’s birthdays… the rest just pop up in my newsfeed and I wish them a happy birthday.
I’m guessing if it was something smaller than a whole meal, they would’ve taken your word for it. Most places just send out birthday week/month things for 1 free X on order to avoid situations like this.
I can understand wanting to verify an actual birthday but if I was management, I’d let it slide with the facebook thing.
We went out to celebrate a birthday once and the young adult birthday person didn’t have an ID on them and wanted a cocktail and wine to celebrate. The waiter, after checking with management, was kind enough to accept a scanned copy of a passport for the person shown on their iphone when the birthday celebrant was carded.
Sometimes you have to use some common sense and trust when you run a business. Better to leave the customers ending dinner on a happy note talking about how great your restaurant is, especially when the group is larger and the rest are paying customers. You can’t buy the kind of advertising you get from happy, satisfied customers.
I suspect that a scanned passport isn’t actually legal ID for the purpose of buying alcohol. I’m really surprised any business would accept that.
I also can’t imagibe being a “young adult” and not having ID in me when going out to celebrate my birthday. Young adults should fully expect to n carded.
A free meal, I could see lettungnthat slide. But they’ve probably had lots of people try to take advantage too.
“I suspect that a scanned passport isn’t actually legal ID for the purpose of buying alcohol. I’m really surprised any business would accept that.”
Probably not “legal”, nope, but again humans don’t always follow the letter of the law and make judgement calls based on common sense and judging the risks. I’d say scanned passport is a lot less likely to be fake than an ID. Fake IDs are very, very common.
“I also can’t imagine being a “young adult” and not having ID in me”
People, even adults, forget things. It happens to the best of us sometimes.
I remember once, many years ago, my dh and I went out to dinner. He was a young pastor just a few months into serving his first church. He averaged 5-6 funerals a month each of the first 6 months.
We went to dinner after he officiated a funeral and happily saw that a neighboring pastor wife was our waitress. She had heard about this zillionth funeral. She brought a big bowl of ice cream with candies and 2 spoons and said she just remembered it was my birthday.
People, even adults, forget things. It happens to the best of us sometimes. <<
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It does, but then you don’t get to get on the plane, into the bar, buy a beer at the game. A lot of the restaurants that do a freebee on your birthday do require proof and if you are 12 you need a copy of the birth certificate or some other proof.
My kids are 21 and 22, but the 22 year old still has the vertical license (for minors) and many places won’t even look at the date to see if she’s ‘legal.’ The rule is vertical license=no drinks and usually not admittance. The 21 year old got tired of it and went and got a new license.
^just learned about the vertical license last week while in Santa Fe. This rooftop bar said they simply do not serve anyone who has a vertical card regardless of age. Had never heard if a vertical license!
@BunsenBurner Maybe? I guess the argument would be they are a place of public accommodations and discriminating in service based on age. In some states that would violate the law. I don’t think in all.
“It does, but then you don’t get to get on the plane, into the bar, buy a beer at the game.”
Of course and that is to be expected. But sometimes folks use common sense and make things work and it is appreciated when it happens.
Honestly, if I owned a restaurant I just wouldn’t do the “free meal/item on your birthday” thing at all. It’s rife with issues and I think that often stems from employees abusing the system as much as customers. The ice cream story above is a perfect example. Sure, nice for the customers but not nice for the owner of the business. It wasn’t really the waitperson’s product to give away for free. This stuff happens all the time - to friends, to get big tips - and affects business owner’s profit margins. Running a restaurant is a tough business and margins can be thin. Or you run into issues like you have here whereby you have to have a policy to confirm the birthday and risk alienating customers. It’s a tough business for sure.
^^ Why? They can limit the types of ID’s they accept. They can refuse student IDs, foreign IDs. They can rightly claim they don’t want their servers to have to calculate the age based on the teeny tiny date (and man, they are tiny) on the license. They just want to look, see the horizontal license that is only issued to 21 and up, and go with that.
They can also refuse service to people without shirts, ties, shoes, dinner jackets, with beards, with tattoos. You aren’t entitled to eat or drink in a private restaurant.
But the vertical license means it was issued to a minor so bars can just refuse them, especially if they are OOS. they have to check the horizontal ones, but the vertical ones are an automatic reject. When I was younger, the licenses issued to minors expired on the 18th birthday, and you had to get a new one. I think they had a strip across the top that said something like ‘underage driver’.
My first license was a piece of card stock paper and it could be changed on any Selectric II typewriter. No picture, but most bars accepted them. Drinking age 18, so they figured at 16 you were close enough.
It’s perfectly reasonable for the restaurant not to accept a FB posting. There is zero verification that the birthday is accurate on that. You can put in any date. Both of my kids have different FB birthdays listed than their actual birthday. A FB friend recently was getting all kinds of random “Happy Birthday” messages and she has no idea why since she did have her real birthday listed but for some reason FB sent out the notice to friends that it was her birthday. I’ve seen that happen before. I’ve also had an uncle who is a prankster type who likes to fake it’s his birthday randomly and get “happy birthday” fb messages from people. There is no credibility at all in the fb birthday.
