Tonight, I was working and there was a drunk guy that came into the store... STUMBLING. He fell in one of the aisles and the on-duty manager had to be called over. First, the guy tells a CC that he has a heart problem and that he'll be fine. Then, when the manager comes over, he tells her that he had Chemo today. So, after the manager got done talking to him, he went off on his way and went to U-Scan to purchase alcohol. The manager could tell that he was drunk too. After the guy got out to the parking lot, he fell again. When he fell the manager went out there to deal with it. While dealing with it, the manager talked to the man's wife. The wife told the manager that she shouldn't have let him buy the alcohol. The manager wanted to say, but didn't, that she (the wife) shouldn't have driven him to the store to buy the alcohol. Fortunately, his wife was driving. Unfortunately, he got away with buying alcohol when he was drunk at 8:15 at night.
Note: The cashier working at U-Scan didn't talk to the guy so she had no idea.
Any cashier able to sell alcohol has the authority to refuse the sale to an obviously intoxicated person, regardless of how they got there. This was inexcusable.
If the wife knew her husband was drunk and still drove him to Kroger to buy alcohol, it sounds to me like she and maybe her husband was hoping that something would happen and they would be able to file a lawsuit against Kroger.
Like Nocturnia said, buying alcohol is a privilege, not a right. Thanks to the Intoxicated Persons Act (which is law in most states) stores and their employees can actually get huge fines if they knowingly sell alcohol to someone who is acting drunk. There's around a $1000 cap, but what's even bigger is that the store may lose its alcohol license.