it's because i say so, part deux

continuing on the tangent as to how ignorant people are and/or how much they pay attention to detail....

i'm in one of the local all in one department stores yesterday right before going in for work, getting some things to further clutter up my room (or what is fast becoming the next blackhole) and i need to get something on a higher shelf. i look around and see no customer service associates in sight. i contemplate bringing it down myself, reasoning that: yes, it's bulky but it's light and it's relatively durable plastic so there's no chance of breakage. after 5 more minutes of waffling, i give in to my inner voice that is urging me to go grab that sucker because if you don't you're going to be late for work, you loser. so, i do.

the moment that i start returning the stack that i don't need, another potential customer walks into the aisle that i am in. she starts to randomly ask me questions about the products that are clearly, clearly marked in front of her. she's wearing glasses that could have possibly been cut from old bank bulletproofing glass, that i figure she's clinically blind. she asks me the difference of one product versus another and i tell her that one is cracked and the other isn't. after a barrage of a million more questions, she finally says that she needs help in getting the said item because she can't reach it when it's right in arm's reach of her, closer to her i might add, than to me.

at this point, i look at her blankly. a second later, i blink and figure that it's probably wasted on her, what with her visual condition and all. i get what she requested, smile at her and say: "i don't work here, you know."

she then goes, nonplussed: oh, i thought you did.

excuse me?

this isn't the first time this has happened to me either. the last encounter prior to this was in the last dance event wherein i held the elevator for other hotel guests where the said event was being held. once entrapped within, they asked me a bunch of questions which i could easily answer since i knew the answers to them. when they stumped me with a question, they looked smug, finally victorious that they feasibly knew more than the staff. that's when the doors opened and i told them that i was a guest myself. they replied that i had a look of authority which i found to be full of bovine excrement.

what is this? does it equate in people's minds that anybody wearing a monkeysuit is immediately delegated to the menial task of being answerguy or get-that-tray-off-the-shelf-man? do people no longer see it as clothing to distinguish but as clothing to dictate their whims and fancies? if that is the case, why doesn't it happen to anybody else but me? whatever happened to the debonaire aura that 007 so effortlessly exuded?

then again, maybe i shouldn't wish for that at all. who knows, i might actually be mistaken for one and get "invited" unto a stretch limousine, sat in front of some mobster and asked where i put the family jewels.

i doubt that any amount of explaining that i'm not who they think i am would ever please them, and i truly would be shaken and stirred.