Thruway Fine Wines & Liquors

This place is pretty damn big, and it has a gloriously expansive collection of wines and spirits. It’s reasonably priced, plus they have some great discounts. I would love to spend hours wandering around here — you name it, they have it. However, I would never, ever recommend this place to anybody, thanks to a stultifyingly moronic policy which means they only accept a state driver’s license as proof of ID. Now, I am British, and carry only a UK Passport as proof of ID. As it’s issued by Her Majesty’s passport authorities, you’d think that’d be fine and dandy. Wrong!
I visited today with my fiancée (who is from NY) — she took two bottles of wine to the counter while I selected a bottle of whiskey. We were both asked for ID, and as soon as the cashier saw that it was a passport, she made some murmuring ‘no, no’ noises. She didn’t even look at my passport. May I hasten to add that both myself and my fiancée are 28 years old. Please, can someone explain to me how a UK Passport is somehow less legit than a NY driving license? It has a microchip in it! So, yes, that’s right — as far as Walden Fine Wines & Liquors is concerned: if you can’t drive, you can’t drink.
This has happened before, where we were both carded upon arrival, and as I didn’t have a US driver’s license, they wouldn’t even let me look around. There is a sign on the door that says ‘nobody under 21 permitted without a parent or guardian’. Yeah.
We were given the option of either getting the wine, which my fiancée took to the counter, or the whiskey, which I took to the counter. We opted for neither, and walked out. This idiotic policy means they lost approximately $ 37 worth of our business today, and I will be sending them a written complaint for mindlessly discriminating against non-​US customers. Nice job!