"No way will I ID a person I know is older than 21. I do have common sense and my common sense tells me this guy is older than 21. Yes, fire me if you'd like. There are other jobs out there. They may not be the best jobs, but I'm sure one can be found that pays the same as a cashier."
This is awesome. Just move from job to job, week to week, quitting everytime the management tells you to do something that you don't understand or doesn't make sense to you. Truly the adult solution.
I work for the State of Texas as a Correctional Officer. My son was on leave from the Navy this last week, and we had a short conversation on the general concepts of:
1. We both like doing "what we do" on the job, for the most part. Not every part is fantastic, but it is agreeable in most parts.
2. We don't always like the way we are required to do our job, based upon specific supervisors, policies, or "traditions".
3. Some folks are protected by the system, and have no place in chain of command. Either at the top or the bottom of it.
So, knowing that, I wouldn't recommend my son going AWOL or getting a dishonorable because of some misunderstood rule or statute.
I was a sacker at Kroger in high school. I also worked as a checker for another chain in high school. I can't recall a whole bunch about the day-to-day of that job any longer, but I do know I was basically a dumb high school kid, and pretty much just tried to keep it between the white lines of what they told me to do. If I went on some philosophical tirade about store policy on cigarettes to the night manager, I was just going to be ignored or laughed at. If I quit the job, I was just going to have to find another job at some other place with some similar policy or maybe a different one. Hard to get a job when you interview for a minimum wage spot based upon the policy of pipe cleaner sales.
Probably a hundred ways, over the last 50 or 60 years we have ended up in a place where pipe cleaner sales pop up a "check age" code on a cash register. But the solution probably lies way out of the comfort zone of about 90% of the folks who complain about how crappy it is.