A Purdue student attempted to buy cold medicine at a store near the Purdue campus, which requires an ID to buy. The store clerk refused to accept the student’s Puerto Rico Real ID driver’s license or a US passport. One would think that anyone checking IDs in a store near a flagship-level university would see out-of-state driver’s licenses and passports on a regular basis.
How often does this occur to students attending an out-of-state college as a residential student and not getting a driver’s license or state ID of the state where the college is in?
When I was about 22, I went to a bar in rural PA with two Brits. The kind of place where everyone turns around and stares at you. The bartender refused to accept the British passports as valid ID so we left, which was clearly what the bartender wanted.
My New York family were visiting California a couple of years ago. The cashier asked what kind of money people use in New York. She was totally serious.
There are really ignorant people in the world. You can’t make this stuff up.
I was out with friends in NYC in my early 20s and was asked if I was visiting from Australia or if I’d immigrated to the US. I was completely confused until I realized they were referring to my accent. I replied, “I’m from the South, but not that far south!”
The person had never heard a Southern accent in person, only exaggerated versions in TV/movies. My friends still tease me about that. They spent the rest of that trip calling me “mate”.
This is a from four years ago. Any updates on any outcomes?
After watching college aged students being interviewed and asked simple questions that they end up giving completely wrong answers to it’s actually not surprising that a store clerk could make a mistake like this. Not everyone is actually as informed as they should be.
It’s also a bit ridiculous that you have to show ID to purchase Mucinex but that’s a whole different topic.
This story is from 2019. While it is unfortunate, we don’t know why this occurred. I’ve never been to the town where Purdue is located, but the story sounds like a refusal-to-serve scenario. I’ve been on the receiving end of these sorts of incidents repeatedly over the last two years. If we wrote a story about every one, it would be in the news constantly every day. Some people, including people who are also employees, are rude. It’s disappointing when it happens, but when it does, I usually just buy what I need somewhere else.
That’s easier when you live somewhere where every chain has several locations an easy drive from where you live. I try not to frequent any one location too much so I don’t set a pattern of behavior. It’s difficult to do with prescriptions, but I’ve been mocked and even hit on when filling prescriptions for shingles since I came down with it last fall. I’ve just dealt with it and moved on. I’ve also split my prescriptions between two pharmacies. It happens at both, but that way, I don’t have go without my medicine. Rude people have shifts, too.
There have been two stories on the local NYC news this week, one about a car rental place refusing to rent to someone with a Puerto RIcan drivers license because they did not realize this was a US document and another from Spirit Airlines. Both asked for a passport from American citizens. The Spirit Airlines agent was backed up by their supervisor. It is amazing how little people know.
Seemingly an unfortunate choice between the workers being motivated by either bigotry or ignorance. While disappointing I am much more sympathetic to the latter.
A NY times article detailing the event includes the following:
“A 2017 poll of 2,200 adults, conducted by Morning Consult after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, found that only 54 percent of Americans knew that people born in Puerto Rico are United States citizens.
Because Puerto Rico is not a state, people there do not vote in presidential elections, but they send one nonvoting representative to Congress.
The poll’s findings varied significantly by age and education. Only 37 percent of people ages 18 to 29 knew people born in Puerto Rico are citizens, compared with 64 percent of those 65 or older. Similarly, 47 percent of Americans without a college degree knew Puerto Ricans are Americans, compared with 72 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree.”
The article implies that the CVS employees were much more familiar with the laws requiring them to attain certain ID than they were about Puerto Rican’s being fellow US citizens.
I’ve shared this before about my travels to Puerto Rico: Once at SJU, I overheard an American asking an airport employee where the currency exchange desk was so that he could convert USD to "Puerto Rican money. "
I’d bet most Americans don’t know Guamanians are American citizens. OTOH, Somoans aren’t automatically American citizens, even though American Somoa is another oversea US territory. We (purposely?) made them confusing.
FYI Guamanians (which was a term of foreign origin) is not the preferred term amongst most native residents of Guam. The preferred term is Chamorros which is based on local tradition.
In this particular case at the pharmacy, the student (probably anticipating ignorance about Puerto Rico) also had a US passport and showed that after the Puerto Rico driver’s license was refused, and the US passport was also refused.
There are not a lot of possible explanations (extreme ignorance and/or bigotry), and they reflect poorly on the clerk beyond rudeness (which itself is a characteristic that stores generally have plenty of reason to screen out in customer-facing employees).
But they should be familiar with a US passport, right?
This is definitely a case of stupidity. A lot of people don’t realize that since Puerto Rico is a territory (or even that it is a territory) that the residents are US citizens. There are also a lot of people that don’t know what a passport looks like.
I think we should really be asking WHY ID is needed to buy cold medicine at all. That is a stupid rule in the first place. Also, you shouldn’t need to be a US citizen to buy cold medicine!
Simply a case of ignorance in not realizing a Puerto Rican ID counts as an American ID. People go overboard when they interpret everyday mistakes like this as forms of racism or bigotry.
