So I received a gift card or two from kind people for my birthday, and decided fairly quickly to spend the money upgrading our neglected PS3 video game library. If you hunt around, you can usually find good prices on last year’s blockbusters; my goal here was to catch up at least to December. We can get 2009’s hits when they become last year’s blockbusters.

Anyway. So I drove over to Target this afternoon to check out their offerings. We’ve scored good deals there before, and sure enough, this time I found Dead Space at a decent clearance price. I had the local teenaged redshirt unlock the case and pull a copy, and then followed him back to the electronics department register.

Debit card in hand, ready to swipe. And then Mr. Pimples asks me for my drivers license.

“Why?”, I ask. Being carded annoys me. Being carded for something that is entirely legal for even an underaged teen to buy, that really annoys me. I’m not even a big fan of store clerks asking for my phone number. It’s none of their business.

He shrugs and gestures to the register. “It’s just new store policy, the system won’t let us just enter birthdates anymore. We have to swipe your drivers license.”

“You’re kidding,” I say. “Look at me. Do I really look like a teenager to you?”

“No..”, Mr. Pimples answers uncertainly. “The system.. uhh..” He then points to the “M” logo on the game, indicating that the ESRB has given Dead Space a “M” (or “Mature”) rating.

That means that the Entertainment Software Association feels that some material in the game might not be suitable for people under the age of 17. It’s sort of like the movie rating system: an “M” video game rating is roughly the same as a PG-13 movie rating, except the age is 17 instead of 13. An “R” rated video game would get an ESRB rating of “AO” – adult only – and would not be sellable at retail to anyone under the age of 18.

Several of the larger department store chains, such as Target, generally have a policy against selling M-rated games (such as Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, Fallout, and apparently Dead Space) to minors without parental approval. But I’ve now passed 17 twice over, plus some. Imagine being told that you can’t go into a theater where a PG-13 film is showing, without allowing the theater to digitally scan and record your drivers license information. That’s what this was.

“What’s that supposed to tell me?”, I answer, pretending that I don’t know what an “M” rating is.

“I can’t sell it to you without your drivers license. We need to swipe it.”

“Look,” I say, growing more irritated by the second. “Do I really look sixteen years old to you? Seriously. Take a good look at me. You’re not scanning my drivers license into your database so that I can buy a $20 game, especially when you can damned well see that I’m well old enough to buy this. I want to talk to your manager.”

“My manager?”, more uncertainly.

“Yes. Your manager. I want to talk to your manager about a $20 clearance video game that you’re not letting me buy. Manager.”

So he calls his manager, a middle-aged woman who clearly looks too busy to deal with this crap today, and she comes wandering over to talk to the obnoxious customer who’s making the summer-job teen clerk feel bad about himself. The kid explains the situation.

“It’s store policy,” she says. “We need your drivers license. The system won’t take our word for it, we need to swipe your license.”

“Do I look SIXTEEN YEARS OLD TO YOU??”

“No, sir.”

“Are you seriously expecting me to allow you to electronically scan my drivers license to prove that I’m not sixteen, just to save five bucks on a freakin’ video game? When you can clearly see that I’m old enough to buy it?”

“Sorry, sir.”

I take a deep breath. “You know, to hell with it. Keep it. I can buy the same game at the same price in a half dozen places within two miles of here. Take your policy and keep your game. Let some other sucker show his papers.” And I left.

Two miles away, I walked into a local Gamestop and found the same game used at a lower price. Gamestop has the same general policy – not to sell M-rated games to kids under 17 – but the clerks there at least have brains in their heads. They can see that I’m clearly not a teenager. Not a question, not a word, here’s the game thankya for your business anything else we can do for you?

Well yes there is, now that you mention it. You got Fallout 3 in stock?

“Sure do.”

Well, let’s bag it and I’ll also have one of those and will probably come back for that later this week.

I walked out of there with about a hundred bucks worth of games, none of which featured cute little fuzzy animals chasing gold rings in magical fairylands, or for that matter, singing along with Hannah Montana. They all had M ratings because, well, I’m not a freakin’ junior high school girl. I’m nearly 40 years old and prefer something not quite appropriate to the teenaged adolescent set.

Seriously, folks. I understand carding a kid for a violent video game. I even understand, to an extent, a clerk asking for ID before selling it. It’s the “swipe it into the database so that we can track who’s buying it” thing that annoys the crap out of me. But most of all, I loathe the “it’s just policy, oh well, what can we do?” attitude. Especially over something that is entirely voluntary, not in any way legally mandated by the state (like alcohol or cigarettes), and is being done only because some nitwit in the head office decided that it was a good pro-family PR move.

I suppose I should be grateful that Target didn’t ask for my social security number. We do have to think of the children, after all.