He could have said bring your mother, which is the law and also the kind thing.

He could have said no and given the kid twenty dollars out of his own pocket, which is against shop policy and against nothing else.

What he did instead was open the till, give a thirteen-year-old a hundred and eighty dollars in cash, put the console on the shelf — and then face a computer system that will not accept a transaction without a licence number and a thumbprint.

So he entered his girlfriend’s driver’s licence, which he had in his wallet because he had collected a parcel for her, and he pressed his own thumb onto the scanner.