A man shared his encounter with a pregnant woman who wanted to drink alcohol and he refused to serve her. Which resulted in an altercation between the woman and her husband.
I am unclear about the law as to whether bartenders can be sued, fined, or prosecuted for serving alcohol to pregnant women. To prevent any complications, my job has a rule in place that you cannot serve alcohol to any visibly pregnant women. We treat it the same way we treat an ID that we aren’t sure if it’s fake. If the possibly underaged person (or in this case, pregnant person) doesn’t leave, we kick out the whole party to prevent them from buying alcohol for the person who shouldn’t be served.
Last Friday, I had a visibly pregnant woman and a party of 4 other women come in. I’m super lenient on what I consider visibly pregnant. Like you have to be clearly wearing maternity clothes and be like 8 months. This woman was clearly very very pregnant. She went to order alcohol. I told her unfortunately, I can’t serve her alcohol. She asked why. I told her that she is visibly pregnant and it’s against policy. All of her friends and she just groaned and walked out. I thought it was the end of it.
The next day, a man came in and asked for me by name. He then proceeded to yell at me, saying his wife had been in there and I refused to serve her. She was pretty much the only person in recent memory I had refused to serve so I told him that it was policy to not serve alcohol to women we believe are pregnant. He instantly broke down in what I can only describe as angry tears and told me his son was going to be stillborn, and his wife’s friends took her out to distract her.
I feel terrible but the wife came in yesterday to tell me that it’s okay and that her husband is just really going through it. She asked to speak to my manager and they talked about the policy. My manager actually congratulated me on doing the right thing but I can’t stop thinking it was a wrong move on my part.