For background, my coworker is an older woman in her sixties, and we tend to get along for the most part, but one thing that really gets on my nerves is the way she handles IDing our customers for alcohol sales. Our policy is that if someone looks under forty we card them, but she cards everyone no matter what, it doesn’t matter if they’re in their twenties or in their nineties. She absolutely refuses to sell a beer without carding them, and it doesn’t matter how old they are, if they don’t have an ID she sends them away.

And even if they do have an ID, she reads every single detail on the card, makes people take off any hats or glasses they might be wearing, and if it’s an international thing or something she doesn’t recognize she turns into a detective/interrogator and starts asking a million questions.

Idk why she is like this. I asked her once why and she said, “well, if the ID is expired we’re not allowed to serve them,” and our boss over heard and said that that didn’t really matter and she shouldn’t worry about it, but she remained unconvinced.

Another time she told me all panicked about how she had almost not carded a man before selling him a beer, and she said that he gave her a look and she said that look told her he was an off duty police officer and that he was warning her that she needed to card him or she could lose her license. (???) She was so freaked out about this that she talked about it non stop for the next two days.

But onto what happened today, we were really busy, so everyone was all on edge including myself, and towards the end of the day when the rush had died down, a couple came up to my coworker’s window and the man ordered a beer. This man was very obviously in his mid 30s to early 40s. No one else would’ve batted an eye about selling him a beer, but my coworker immediately gets all suspicious and goes, “ID please,” in this tone like she’s a teacher catching a kid in a lie. Unfortunately the guy doesn’t have his ID on him so my coworker very firmly tells him she won’t sell to him. The guy’s wife tries showing her ID so they can get it, but my coworker tells her that if HE’s the one drinking, she needs HIS ID.

Idk what came over me in the moment, but I guess I just got annoyed so I walked over to my coworker’s window and told the couple, “come to my window, I’ll get you the beer.”

My coworker tries to stop me, saying he doesn’t have an ID, but I just told her that he’s obviously old enough and if she didn’t want to serve them I would. I got the couple the beer and my coworker walked away looking mad.

For the next two hours my coworker just kept muttering to herself, “they looked young to me,” “when you get older everyone looks younger.”

Almost as soon as I did it, I felt really bad about it. I felt like I was rude and embarrassed her for no real reason other than she had this one annoying habit. I talked to her and told her I was sorry if what I did was rude and that I wasn’t trying to be an asshole or anything. She said it was fine but things still felt tense and awkward for the rest of the day.