The Safeway was like any other: a somewhat upscale grocery store with a decent selection of reasonably priced wine.  I had found an Argentinian malbec and was waiting to check out at the register.

I really hate the shopper cards that Safeway and similar stores force down their customers’ throats.  I blame the experience I had at my first job, which was working customer service at a grocery store that had such cards. As such, I try to avoid signing up for the cards.

My usual approach is to borrow the card of the person in line behind me.  Unfortunately, I was the only one in line that day.

The cashier scanned the bottle and asked me for my ID, which I provided.  She then asked me if I had a Safeway card.  I glanced once more for a savior to emerge at the register.  Seeing none, and not wanting to give Safeway several dollars of pure profit, I capitulated:  I asked to sign up for a card.

I wasn’t about to give Safeway my real name, address, and phone number, so I started filling out the form with some fake information.  I made a few marks with my pen before suddenly stopping.  I had just shown this cashier my real ID, and while I didn’t expect her to remember the details of my contact information, I figured that I had better make my fake information be pretty close to to the truth lest it draw suspicion.  For the Safeway card, I became Jeff Keatling living in St. Paul, MN.  My birth month and year were accurate, but I left the date as an ambiguous European number one, which looked kind of like a number seven.  I was so clever, I thought.

I paid for my wine before giving the sign-up form back to the cashier.  She glanced at it, then did a double-take.

“Keatling?” she asked.

“Yup,” I replied.

“Jeff?” she confirmed.

“Right,” I said.

There was then an awkward pause as she stared at me.  I already had the bagged wine in my hand, so I smiled, turned, and walked out the door.

I’m almost certain she thought I had used a fake ID for the booze.