A disturbing Trend

You walk into a store to make a purchase and before they ring you up, almost as often as not these days the cashiers request your phone number, e-mail and occasionally physical address. Alternatively, some of them don't need to because you already signed up for some sort of rewards program...the Safeway card, for instance, requires your name, address, and telephone number so when you use it to save the money they look at the receipt and greet you by your last name.
I find those sorts of things intrusive enough. I mean, I get where they are coming from and appreciate the veneer of courtesy...I would just be more comfortable with "thank you sir" than "Thank you, Mr. Butthead" or whatever name I forge on any given rewards program if I were to actually forge a name on there. They don't need to know my name and the extra advertising they send me in exchange for the added level of pseudo-pleasantries is also unwelcome.
But imagine how much worse it would be if just to get seated you had to drop your driver's license on them? How unfair would it be to rip the privilege of eating at IHOP from all the drunk drivers just because they didn't have their license at any given moment? Not that I am insinuating it is only drunks occupying the booths at everyone's local pancake house...and it was an isolated restaraunt...but still...if I am EVER asked for my license simply for the privilege of eating sub-par breakfast foods...or any other type of food...I am pretty sure the objections he raised will be pretty mild in comparison.
There is a point where businesses are too personal and I am pretty sure that incident was way past the line. A lot of people think you are just being paranoid when you refuse to dish out your social security number whenever it is asked for or whatever...but now it turns out the people who objected to them in the first place were right. What a shock...