Sorry, I Don't Work Here.

I didn't know it was unusual to be hit up to do things or find things at stores where I don't work until I mentioned it in passing to Shayne and saw his response. I mean, I understood that it might be a little unusual for old ladies in Walmart to ask me to reach things down off the high shelves, but then, not everybody is as tall as I am. I'm really ridiculously tall, and I'm used to being put to work in this way. Fetching things from high places is part of my service to humanity.

Shayne thought it was crazy, not only that people ask this of me, but that I just take it in stride. He thought it was very weird. Why didn't this happen to him, as he is taller than I? I've hypothesized that maybe the old ladies find me more sympathetic because I am female. Whatever the reason is, I feel that someone else must have this experience sometimes. It can't just be me.

But besides this, I feel that I get to be mistaken for an employee at whatever store I happen to be shopping in far more often than is my due. Once, when sopping in the Redmond, WA Fred Meyer, I discovered a display of cute little ruffled aprons. I selected a red one with black polka-dots and cupcake applicees, and put it on just to see how it felt and how long it was on my tall frame. It that moment, another customer appeared at the end of the aisle and began explaining in detail some item she wanted, that I had never heard of. Had I know where to find the item I would have just told her, but instead I had to cause us both embarrassment by letting her know I didn't work there and I had just been trying on the apron. She snorted her derision and stalked off with an expression of disgust on her face. I wanted to ask her if she really thought a Fred Meyer employee would be caught dead wearing such a kitchy apron, but the answer was obvious. The fact that it was an apron at all meant I was an employee.

Just a couple of days ago, I was pushing my cart through the kitchen tools aisle at Walmart and I had just placed an item in my cart that I wished to buy when a lady came up beside me and told me she had a random question and she was getting ready to go to Home Depot for the item she wanted. It was one of those plastic refrigerator soda can dispensers where the sodas roll down and you grab them at the bottom...you know. My parents have one, (my mom has one, now that my dad is gone) but I never had a use for one. I suggested the sodas section of the store, or maybe the hardware section. She had already looked in those places, and she said she would just go to Home Depot. She thanked me politely and left.

After I left the store, I realized she must have thought I was an employee. I carefully considered my outfit: light blue jeans and a navy blue grandpa cardigan that was unbuttoned to reveal a yellow-green shirt beneath. Had she thought I was an employee just because I had on a blue cardigan? Had she missed the large, red patent-leather purse in my cart, or the stylish yellow-green shirt with the subtle yet striking bronzy metal studs?

Anyway. It seems like this happens to me all the time. Shayne wears his actual blue and khaki walmart uniform to walmart in his off hours and doesn't get asked questions. He says it's because he's not wearing his name tag. Go figure. I, on the other hand, wear something that gestures vaguely toward an employee uniform and people assume I work there.

And another thing -- why do people only ask, "Do you work here?" when the person obviously does? They don't ask me if I work there. It's weird.