Yet another case of mistaken identity...
“EXCUSE me, would you be able to find me a more expansive set of felt tips?”
“Eh?” I thought as I looked up from the book in which I was currently absorbed, wondering why on earth the radgie lady was talking to me? Couldn’t she see I was in the middle of a big decision?
I had only five minutes to pick my holiday poolside read; did I go for a heavy historical volume that I thought made me look intelligent a bit like when Joey Barton tries to look like Morrissey and uses long words on twitter.
Conversely, should I plump for the latest hippy lifestyle tosh that had to have the words key, secret, power, seven or magic in the title? My thoughts were jolted back to the present as the lady became more irate: “I said excuse me – can I purchase a set of colouring pens which offer a more expansive range of colours?”
Miffed, I took a bit more notice of this clearly mannerless lady. Her dressed-down yet obviously expensive attire and the use of vocabulary such as ‘purchase’ and ‘expansive’ pegged her as a possible Jesmonista yummy mummy, a coastal Countess from Tynemouth or a denizen of one of the more leafy settlements that adorn the Tyne Valley (no offence intended to the thousands of upstanding citizens who live in those places – you especially will know the sort of character I’m on about!).
Her tone oozed both superiority and contempt – it clearly implied she thought I belonged to the lower orders.
Indeed, all that was missing from the end of her sentence was the term peasant, lackey or monkeyboy.’ Indeed, I half expected her to clap her hands or ring a small handbell to get me instantly tugging at my forelock and doffing my cap.
My apparently docile inactivity was clearly winding her up more than her entitled arrogance was pushing my buttons.
Then, reddening to the neck of her Fair Trade, organic cotton, country check shirt she blustered: “I take it you do work here...”
Aha! All was becoming clear now - what a daft, judgemental wassock! Just because I was wearing a blue shirt and dark trousers didn’t automatically make me an employee of this well- known chain of stationary shops.
How dare she assume that? To be fair to her, I was more annoyed by the fact it wasn’t the first time I’d faced such a situation.
More galling was the reality that such errors of identity always seemed to happen in bargain bookshops, pound shops or in the less glamorous sections of budget supermarkets.
I clearly resembled the geek that all the other employees send to check the price on that troublesome item that won’t go ‘beep’ at the checkout.
Every store has one – usually called Colin or Norman - he’s sent off to check the correct price on the own-brand tuna flakes but takes over 20 minutes because, on the way to the canned meat isle, he is distracted by the pattern on his jumper!
Howay man - he’s even lower on the pecking order than the hairyscary crazed guy who’s never allowed out the warehouse out the back and is only glimpsed fleetingly as those thick plastic flappy doors are parted by a trolley or floor buffer (indeed, why are the floor buffers driven by ex-hells angel lookalikes?).
I was gutted! Why was I never mistaken as a member of staff in a funky gym, trendy fashion outlet, macho builders merchants or outside a nightclub door? It was almost a bad as the times I’ve walked off stage at a comedy club, and punters mistook me for somebody who HADN’T worked at the club!