The BARS Program Blog

Think You Can Guess Someone's Age? Guess Again!

Many bartenders, servers, and clerks will tell you that they just "know" when someone is underage. They talk about different signs or "tells" that reveal a patron's true age. But it turns out that even those who think they are pretty good at reading people come up woefully short when tested. 

In this video, four bartenders (with experience ranging from 3 weeks to 40 years) try to guess whether someone is under 21 or over 21. While some fare slightly better than others, the takeaway is that there is no real way to judge whether someone is 19 versus 24. 

At the end of the video, one of the bartenders protests, "I would have carded everyone here, for the record." We wholeheartedly agree with this approach. Instituting a strict carding policy for all of your employees is the only real way to prevent selling age-sensitive products to minors. 

Feel free to share this video with your employees to drive home the point that no one can guess age with total accuracy. Want to learn more about how The BARS Program can help you enforce your carding policy? Go to https://www.barsprogram.com/freeconsult/ or call 1-877-540-5500 to set up a free consultation with BARS owner David Gaudet. 

** Video credit to Huffington Post.