Anyone who has applied for or renewed his Texas driver’s license since April 15 knows that the state’s redesigned version looks starkly different than the former version most of us carry in our wallets. In fact, some might even say it looks like a fake.
That’s definitely what a Central Market cashier and even the store manager thought recently when a friend of mine got up to the front with a shopping cart full of groceries, including a 6-pack of some sort of high-end beer. She’s 26 but looks young, so the cashier carded her, and when my friend whipped out her new Texas driver’s license, the cashier looked at her like she was a sophomore at SMU trying to pull a fast one on him. He called over his manager, who also looked at the license like it was a foreign object.
My friend was told by Central Market that since they had no way of verifying her license, she wouldn’t be allowed to purchase the beer. She didn’t mind that much — the worst part was all of the people waiting in line behind her looking at her like she was a minor trying to break the law, she says — but the situation was a bit ironic, given that she had pulled up to the register with about $180 worth of groceries, and her single six-pack wasn’t Bud Light, or any typical beer like that. It’s also ironic that the state is touting the new driver’s license as giving "law enforcement improved resources for verifying the authenticity of Texas-issued driver licenses and identification cards, while combating counterfeiting, photo swapping, tampering and other types of fraud."
