you should warn her that could be considered a stolen valor crime.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Valor_Act_of_2013

if someone wanted to report her she could face jail time and tarnishing your fathers military legacy.

As I understand it, it came from the military essentially vietnam vets off at bus stations and then letting the local communities figure out what to do with them from there. It's been co-opted to some degree, especially by the larger chains, but most of the local businesses near me keep up the practice because the military traps the uneducated into contracts that pay far less than poverty wages. Among many things, it's a way of maintaining some measure of goodwill between local communities and military bases, and it's looking more and more likely that we're going to need every scrap of good feeling we can get as this slow descent into fascism continues...

It sounds pretty stupid.

America in a nutshell

If your store happens to be close to an army base, do you just accept the disadvantage of giving away part of your profit?

No they just raise the base price for everyone.

Teachers did actually get benefits in my country until 2016. It was a pretty decent system.

If you are a landlord then having an operational school nearby increases local rent prices so you do get to profit from charging teachers less rent.

Many Americans have an uncanny reverence for the military and those who served. I guess that reverence seeped its way into many a retail store’s management.

I think it’s just about optics for the most part.

I could be wrong here... but around the George W. Bush administration + 9/11 and the government painting everything they do as something to protect "against the terrorists!!!!" that's when a lot of things started happening.

That's when the view of the military seemed to flip and it's just been stuck that way. Movies like Top Gun were made as a PR stunt to make the military look better. The same is for basically every cop show out there: make cops look like the good guys. Anywho, every company went out of their way to really show "how much they support the troops" by giving a discount. And every smooth-brain started saying "THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE" every single time. The hero worship was/is real, and it shouldn't be, and it's a real problem. (Totally different conversation, but it's led to an influx of people joining the military, or trying to, who really shouldn't). Before Bush + 9/11, I don't recall military discounts outside of, like, businesses that were owned/operated by vets.

Based on the stories I have read some people are quite rude about asking for it.

Being able to deny rude people their request is a power play that customer service people can enjoy using.

A lot of them just assume that everywhere bends over backwards for them. It's incredibly obnoxious. Source: was a bartender for a decade

Because they are military and some people do not like that.

There are two ways to look at it, as I understand:

1. Many (certainly not all) vets have a chip on their shoulder and expect white glove treatment. Kind of like a less whiny Karen.

2. Many are of the belief that we should not reward people for aiding the government in its atrocities.

I think the meme is an exaggeration of those positions.

That's not what a military discount is or does. It's for active duty only, or full time retired, meaning you need an active and valid military ID on your person that matches YOU. Not your wife, not your friend Larry, not your brother Darrell, not your OTHER brother Darrell, YOU. It's one of the things that makes life harder for people who leave the military. And while your in it, it does you little good.

I know this because I've managed stores with military discounts. The only thing worse than having to say ''we don't do that'' is ''Yes we do'' Because the reality is that unless your talking to an old guy in a military insignia cap, or a surprisingly young enlisted person in uniform or military sweats, they aren't getting the ID. You got your shins blown off in Vietnam? Well fuck you, the discount is for active enlisted and CAREER officers. No one the fuck else. Guess how many dessert storm, Vietnam, Iraq, Korean War, or WWII vets like hearing that shit explained to them. They are LIVID. They want ass pats and bjs they don't want to hear they can't save $0.07 on a pile of lumber because they didn't make being drafted a career just got PTSD and forever shrapnel. I LOVE telling people no discount for anyone. It's fantastic.

Actually that is not that insane. Canadian military often gets to take advantage to discounts in America.

Seems like if you run a business near a military base then you would just set your prices X% higher than you really want to set them, and then offer an X% discount to all the people who shop there, knowing that everyone will wind up paying what you originally wanted to charge anyway

But really you’re just punishing veterans with PTSD

Failing to give special treatment to someone is not punishing them. Especially when we're talking about special treatment for an entire category of people, most of whom don't have PTSD (estimates range from 6-27% of those deployed to a war zone, and not all veterans served in a war zone), many of whom are financially well off.

Maybe the VA and the federal government should do more for vets. Maybe the military itself should take care of the troops a bit better. But asking private businesses to prop up veterans at their own expense seems like a misguided approach.