I’m a server working on a busy Friday night when I get a family of three: a dad, a mom, and a guy who we can plainly see is in the military. He looks young and is very flirtatious.

Me: “Hello and welcome! I’ll be taking care of you.”

Son: “Thank God we got a hot one.”

Me: “Ha. Okay. What can I get you to drink?”

Mom & Dad: “Water, please.”

Son: “I’ll take a peach margarita.”

Me: “What kind of tequila?”

Son: *Starts to smile* “Which do you prefer?”

Me: “Don Julio is top shelf here.”

Son: “Great. I’ll take that.”

Me: “Okay. Can I see your ID, please?”

Son: “I’m not sure if I have it. I just got home from the military and I’m looking for a good drink and good company.” *Winks*

Me: “Okay, but I can’t serve you unless you have ID.”

Son: “All I have is my military ID on me. I don’t know if it has my birthdate on it, though.”

As a bartender as well, I know it does.

Me: “That’s fine. I’ll just look at it quickly.”

The son smiles really big and winks again.

Son: “Okay… here you go.”

I take the ID and flip it over to see his birthdate.

Me: “Wait… you aren’t twenty-one. You just turned nineteen.”

The son loses his smile and takes back his ID.

Dad: “I’ll take the peach margarita.”

Me: “Sorry, but I can’t serve a drink he ordered to you.”

Dad: “But he’s in the military, for Christ’s sake!”

In my head, I’m thinking he just got out of boot camp. At this point, I’m pretty pissed at all the time they’ve wasted. I’ve been sat again, and I know I’m not going to get a tip from this family.

Me: “Sir… I don’t care if he’s in the Avengers. He isn’t twenty-one and looks it. I’ll get fired on the spot.”

Dad: “Can we request another server?”

Me: “If you don’t like this table, you can go back to the host and put your name down for another table and server. The wait is forty-five minutes. I’ll be right back with your waters if you decide to stay.”

I then turned around and greeted my next table. They did stay but complained about everything, so the manager went by. They tried ordering the drink with him, and since I had already explained everything to him, he carded the kid and said, “I’ll bring you a virgin peach margarita on me.”

No tip on $40.00.

I’m in a popular gaming outlet. The cashier is talking to a kid who looks about nine or ten years old.

Cashier: “Sorry, can’t sell you that. That game is rated seventeen and up.”

Kid: “Oh, it’s for my cousin. I’m giving it to him as a gift.”

Cashier: “I said the exact same thing when I was your age and Mortal Kombat 3 came out. They didn’t believe me, either. Pick something else.”

Months later, I’m hanging around outside a mall. A girl who looks twelve or so approaches me.

Girl: “Excuse me, are you eighteen?”

I pull off my cap to reveal a badly receding hairline.

Me: “Don’t I wish! I’m not buying you cigarettes, though, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Girl: “No, no. [New Game] came out and I really want it, but they won’t sell it to me because it’s M-rated. Can you buy it for me?”

She is holding up a small wad of cash.

Me: “Listen. I did the exact same thing when I was a kid and they wouldn’t sell me a mature-rated game and my parents said no. I asked some random shmoe if he could run in and buy it for me, and I gave him the allowance money I’d been saving for months. The jerk went inside this exact same mall here and never came back out. Use your head! You have no idea who I am or who the next joker after me is.”

Girl: “Um… yeah, I guess I didn’t think of that.” *Shuffles away*

It sure is funny watching the next generation after you bump their noses in the same corners of the maze of life.

The golf club I work at is hosting a Year Eleven prom — a ball for school leavers aged fifteen to sixteen. Since it’s pretty common for people to try and sneak some alcohol into these events, we have security on the door performing searches and confiscating any contraband.

Partway through the event, I head into the manager’s office where the confiscated booze has been stashed. There are a handful of hip flasks, a couple of small bottles of vodka… and an entire 750-ml bottle of Bourbon.

I ask one of the bouncers how that particular item came to be confiscated, and he tells me that one of the guests simply had it tucked up the sleeve of his jacket and tried to claim that he had a prosthetic arm!

I am a night manager at a popular fast food restaurant. Our drive-thru cashier is fifteen and an amazing worker.

One night, I am counting the safe and she gives the “creeper code,” which is something we late-nighters came up with to alert to a problem. She gives the code to our cook (her boyfriend) who rushes the headset to me. I stomp up to the front and tell my cashier I’ve got it from here and to take a break.

This greasy slimeball who has never heard of a comb starts asking where the “hot babe” was. I would love to ban him, but my superiors are spineless, so I take his money and give him his food.

Creeper: “It ain’t no thang, darlin’! I was just complimentin’ that fine little piece of a**.”

Me: “No, you were propositioning my underaged cashier.”

The idiot took a while to process this, but his buddy muttered, “Oh, s***!” He whispered something to the creeper, and they peeled out.

I work in a tattoo shop based in New Zealand, and we have a law making it illegal to tattoo anyone under the age of sixteen.

A girl who looks about fourteen walks in.

Girl: “I would like a consult, please.”

Me: “Can I see your ID, please?”

She gets super defensive.

Girl: “What?! This is age discrimination! I should call the police!”

I called my manager over and she called the police. The cop station is two minutes away from the shop, so they turned up in a matter of minutes. The girl was promptly taken away and questioned by police who then questioned me and my manager. We both got off with no punishment because we were abiding by the law.

The girl came back in after a few weeks and continued to berate us, so my manager and I banned her from the store and all other stores in the area.