Excuse me, ma’am

I must look more helpful than I am.  How else to explain why I am always mistaken for a retail clerk.

Normally, it’s at a Target, where although I’m not wearing khakis and a red shirt, someone inevitably asks me for the location of towels.  Other times it’s at a music store, where a mom always manages to ask me if I know which profane lyric has caused a certain rating to be placed on a CD.  Last week, it was a crying child who seemed to have gotten separated from her mother.  She walked by a couple of people before she stopped at my cart and said “No encuentro a mi mamá.”

Since I have worked at a Target-equivalent and in a music store and as a teacher, I’ve always figured some of the force that makes people ask me questions must be in the way I stand.  Maybe it is open, interested, and expecting of a question.

After my workout today, I was less than interested.  I was looking at tomatoes and balancing tea, salmon, and strawberries.  I was 20 minutes removed from a workout, hurried, sweaty, and in running shorts and a t-shirt.  Apparently, this wasn’t enough to flag that I don’t work at the grocery store. 

“Excuse me, ma’am, do you know if a filbert is a hazelnut?” a 20-something man asked while thrusting a bag of what he seemed to hope were nuts in my face.     

I looked at him, I looked at my precariously balanced dinner items, and I looked at the rack of nuts.  

“No,” was my cool response. 

There was nothing else.  No explanation of why I didn’t know, or a guess at what it might be, or an attempt to lead him astray with a lie.  “No,” was all I had. 

“Maybe I should go ask someone else,” he said. 

I nodded.