A New Reason to Wine in Pennsyvania

I don’t know if it is an attempt to remove the messy human element from the liquor buying process or a novel way to fight unemployment by creating more useless government jobs, but Pennsylvania installed the country’s first wine kiosks in two supermarkets at the end of June. The kiosks will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday thru Saturday. They will scan the customers ID and take a Breathalyzer reading. The photo on the ID will be matched with a video image of the customer at the kiosk. If the customer has a breath alcohol level of .02 or higher or the ID does not match the video image, they will be unable to by a bottle of wine. The best part is that the transaction will be monitored by a Liquor Control Board employee from a remote location. This employee will be tasked with confirming that the video matches the ID. The whole process is supposed to take twenty seconds.

My first question is why? Why does Pennsylvania need what essentially amounts to a very complicated vending machine to buy wine? Are Pennsylvanians tired of snooty wine stewards recommending fancy vintages? Do they just want to be able to buy their Ripple and TJ Swan’s in peace? Bob Marcus of the PLCB said, “We happen to be the first because we have the need. As a board, we really wanted to make this much more convenient for people.” So a giant machine that scans your ID and gives you a Breathalyzer while some nameless, faceless government employee watches you on video is more convenient? How do people in Pennsylvania buy wine normally? Where I come from, you walk into the liquor store/department and select a bottle of wine from a shelf/display. Then you walk over to the register and pay for it. Does wine buying in Pennsylvania involve some long, complicated and arcane ritual that takes days to complete?

My next question to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is does this means they are hiring? Wisconsin is a very remote location from Pennsylvania and you are going to need a staff to monitor those video images. At least two people would be required to monitor the kiosks for 72 hours a week. I am sure that we could set up some sort of secure video feed to my home computer. I don’t want to move to Pennsylvania because apparently buying wine there is just too complicated.