. “‘You want my license? I’m going for pancakes, I’m not buying the Hope diamond,’ and they refused to seat us,” Russo said, recounting his experience this week at the Quincy IHOP.
IHOP changes policy of asking for IDs – Yahoo! News
This article is about a man who went to a California IHOP and had to leave his license in order to be seated. The man refused to do so because he had been a victim of identity theft. The restaurant claimed that it began the policy of taking licenses, without management approval, to discourage people from leaving before paying.
At first this story seemed pointless, but after I thought about it, it actually scared me a little bit. I can honestly say that if I went into a restaurant and someone asked for my license, I would probably give it to them. I wouldn’t think about identity theft or all of the personal information that is on my license. You really have no way of knowing who you are giving your id to . Even if the person is a valid employee, it’s not like the IHOP is an exclusive establishment. You don’t know the background of the people who are working there and you don’t know their present day circumstances. They may need money to support their family and not have anywhere else to turn. Not everyone would steal another person’s identity, but the fact that some people would means you have to suspect everyone.
It is kind of sad that you can’t even go to the IHOP without having to worry about your safety and security. As meaningless as I found this article at first, I did open my eyes to who I give my personal information to.
