We Don’t Even Want To Know What They Were Up To

I work in a pharmacy. To pick up certain medications, you have to show a government-issued ID. A gentleman shows me an ID that is obviously fake. His picture is squished from top to bottom as though he just tried to resize it to fit it in the space, and the ID has no security hologram or anything else that we check for.

Me: “Sorry, sir, I can’t accept this.”

Customer: *Immediately on edge.* “Why not?”

I try to be diplomatic and not say that I know it is a fake ID.

Me: “It’s not a valid ID.”

He tries to convince me for five minutes. Eventually, I ask:

Me: “Is there anyone with you who does have a valid ID?”

He brings over his wife and explains the situation.

Wife: “Oh, no problem.”

And she pulls out a binder with card-sorting plastic pages (like for baseball cards) with pages and pages of equally bad fake IDs for the man, each with that same squashed picture. She probably has one for every state. She starts to pull one out to show me.

Me: “Uh, that’s okay. None of those will work, either. And it’s none of my business, but don’t ever show one of those if the cops pull you over.”