Tobacco & liquor store cashier - age-check scripts for cigarette sales - obviously underage gets one clean sentence, hard-to-tell gets the store-wide ID line, "my dad sent me" hands the decision back to the adult; no lecturing, no moralizing, close it in one line

You are a cashier trainer for a tobacco & liquor
store. Prepare a set of age-check and refusal
scripts for cigarette sales. Context: selling to
minors is a red line the cashier personally owns,
but the difficulty at the counter is never
knowing the rule - it's refusing without a fight,
without a lecture, and without holding up the
line.

I'll give you real scenarios (approximate age,
what they're buying, their exact words, the
situation); classify each into one of three
cases and write the scripts.

Case 1 - Obviously underage
- One sentence closes it: "Can't sell you this
  one - have someone from home come get it."
- That's the whole speech. No explaining, no
  lecturing, no "smoking is bad and you're
  young" - every extra sentence is another
  opening to argue with
- If they push "why not": repeat the line only.
  "It's not sellable, have an adult come." Still
  no explanation
- Forbidden phrasings: "what are you trying to
  pull," "where are your parents," "a student
  shouldn't..." - these turn "no sale" into a
  conflict

Case 2 - Can't quite tell (the one that tests
your scripting)
- The check: "Anyone we can't place, we card -
  it's not just you." Framed as the store's
  blanket procedure, not suspicion of one
  person
- ID produced and of age: sell normally, add
  "just routine, thanks for bearing with me" -
  that line is really for the next
  borderline-age customer watching: checks that
  look routine stop stinging
- No ID on them: narrow gently without tearing:
  "Without ID this one really can't happen -
  grab it next time, or a photo of it on your
  phone works." Still nothing shown, treat as
  Case 1
- Forbidden: "you look underage" - that's a
  comment on a face; the procedure checks an
  age, not an appearance

Case 3 - "My dad sent me" (the stickiest)
- Core framing: hand the decision back to the
  adult; the cashier doesn't make the parent's
  decision
- The line: "This one needs your dad himself -
  or call him and have him come by, and we'll
  sell it on the spot." Two doors: the adult
  shows up, or a call plus the adult arriving
- The call-and-still-no-adult version: still no
  sale. Soft landing: "Have your dad come by
  after work - we're open late."
- Kid keeps pushing, line growing behind: call
  the manager. The cashier's script ends at
  "let me get the manager," and the manager
  repeats the same line - the whole store must
  hold identically. Give in once and every
  teenager on the street learns where

Constraints:
- All colloquial, nothing longer than two
  spoken lines
- No lecturing, no moralizing, no citing
  regulation numbers - the counter is not a
  classroom; closing starts with the first
  sentence
- Never address them as "kid" or the local
  equivalent - teenagers bristle at labels;
  talk about the transaction, not the person
- Group scenarios (friends egging each other
  on, someone filming a provocation): don't
  take the bait, don't debate, deliver the
  close and disengage; sustained hassle means
  the manager - one line, written separately
- End each scenario with a one-line note to
  the cashier: "what this line is protecting
  against"

Why it is written this way

The three cases are ordered by difficulty, and they're also the sequence every cashier eventually meets. Case 1's discipline is stopping at one sentence - the obviously-underage customer who gets an explanation gets a debate, and once it's a debate, "no" becomes negotiable. Not explaining isn't coldness; it's closing. An explanation is an offer of reasons, and reasons can be argued - a line with no reasons behind it has nothing to grab.

Case 2 is built around one psychological fact: being singly asked for ID is instantly felt as "you suspect me," while "we card everyone we can't place" reframes the check from confrontation into store procedure. The throwaway "just routine, thanks for bearing with me" is actually paving the road for the next customer - a borderline-age adult who watched the previous adult get carded resists far less. The more routine checks look, the longer this line holds. Banning "you look underage" serves the same purpose: it slides the procedure from verifying an age to judging a face, and a single sentence turns a rule into an insult.

Case 3 carries the most valuable line in the set: hand the decision back to the adult. When a teenager says "my dad sent me," the cashier who believes or disbelieves is trapped either way - believing may mean fronting for a parent who never consented (most parents don't actually send their kid to buy cigarettes), and calling it a lie is an accusation that detonates on contact. "The adult comes in and we sell on the spot" touches neither party: it doesn't rule on whether the kid is truthful, it just makes the transaction conditional on a verifiable fact - the adult appearing. The store-wide consistency clause sits at the end because this line never fails dramatically; it fails one weak moment at a time, and news travels between teenagers faster than any marketing.

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