By an authority, or a would-be client?
Not a prostitute but when I was much, much much younger I was at The Roxy and people kept coming up to me and shouting at me asking if i had an ex. I kept telling them, “No, I just got engaged!”
It wasn’t until much later in the night when I complained to one of my girlfriends about being asked about past boyfriends that it was explained to me that they all thought I was a drug dealer and were asking me for Ecstasy.
You mean the price wasn’t right?
When I was in Hangzhou with my wife, she thought she overheard some guys were saying that she was a prostitute or a gold-digger or something, presumably because she was an attractive Chinese woman leading around a paunchy western guy.
Yes, in my early 20s while living in Boise, Idaho. I later learned the basis for this was essentially the way I dressed, along with the fact that I worked nights and so did my roommate. She didn’t have a car and worked in a hotel coffee shop, so each night after I got done with my second job at night, I’d go sit and wait for her in her coffee shop until her shift ended (about an hour after mine) and I could give her a ride home.
Heard also that the local PD were conducting an actual investigation in the hope of catching me at it. Of course they never did, because I wasn’t a prostitute. Creepy, though. I guess the cops didn’t have enough to do.
I moved not long after. What an awful place.
In my younger days, I met this young woman in a bar. Drinks and conversation followed. Leaping ahead, as I was getting dressed, she mentioned how much trouble she was having financially and the like. So, wanting to reassure her, I told her “Miss, I am a Petty Officer in the United States Coast Guard. As such, I could never accept payment for performing a public service.” and I left.
Yes. I’ve told this story before. Back in med school during ENT rotation we had to park in South Boston on the wrong side of the pike. The school is right next to the Combat Zone. Surgery rotations start early. Surgeries start at seven and you have to see all your patients before AM rounds which have to finish before surgery so you’re there before five. Anyway, I was walking from the parking lot to work one morning at about 4:30 AM and a couple of guys passed me and asked “How much?” I was commenting to the other students “Who is up at 4 in the morning looking for a hooker?” and they responded “Look what we’re up at 4 AM doing?” Yeah-not a really safe place to be walking at that hour; apparently the local hookers used the bathrooms on the ground floor of the dorms to shoot up and for their assignations (nobody ever stayed in the dorms more than a semester).
No, but there have been a few times when I was mistaken for a cop. Most memorable was when somebody tried to report a nearby purse snatching.
I work at a welfare office located in an industrial area, not far from a street with lots of motels. Since I don’t drive, I walk to the bus stop in my work clothes (usually a dress) pretty much every day. I’ve had single men in cars honk at me and/or offer me rides while I’m sitting at the bus stop. I’m a fat, middle-aged woman in an unflattering dress, so other than location, I don’t see how I’m giving the appearance of “working” when I’m really just trying to get home from my actual job.
I’ve never been mistaken for a prostitute, but I’ve been mistaken for a John a few times. 
If I might divert the thread for a moment,
Was this at the Riverside Hotel? If so, its not surprising, as that particular hotel has been a hotspot for prostitution as far back as the 1970s.
“We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread”
A friend of mine who lives in the “big city” has a friend who lives out in the country, and would come visit her Big City Friend and liked to enjoy being scandalized.
So she asked Big City Friend to show her where the hookers hang out. Big City Friend thought for a minute, and then drove her by the edge of the college campus, where the scantily clad drunk college girls could be found. At the time, Big City Friend didn’t know where prostitutes hang out in this city. And, she didn’t really want to drive into unsafe parts of town hoping. But the college girl “hookers” satisfied her friend.
Might it be that you were mistaken for a pimp?
How were you dressed?
ETA: 
Possibly he’s regretting getting that purple leisure suit.
The closest I can come to a Yes on this was when I went on a business trip and took my wife along. Our flight was several hours late, so she dropped me off at the venue, then took the rental car to the hotel to check in. A few minutes later, the hotel room phone rang – the desk clerk had given the room number to a bystander, who saw her checking in alone.
I went to Bangkok with my first wife and mother back years ago. While my mom went to bed early, my wife and I went out to see the night market.
Back to the hotel, we shared the elevator with two inebriated German tourists and their echo-friendly “nieces,” (my marriage, I’m sure) locals gals whose concern for the environment was demonstrated by the lack of excess fabric for what passes as clothing.
The guys saw me and my Japanese wife get, and gave me a huge thumbs up. I can only assume they thought I had local relatives as well.
This reminds me of a girl I met in Hawaii. I was from Vancouver and she was from Minnesota. We hit it off pretty good so I invited her to come and visit me a month or two later.
Being the cheap SOB that I am, I asked her to pay her airfare to Vancouver and I would pay for her flight home.
When the day came, I went out to the airport to pick her up and waited, and waited and waited.
She never came through the gates. I hung around searching everywhere for about an hour, and finally I was paged to come to customs.
Sure enough, there she was, sitting in a chair crying.
It seems customs were a little suspicious of her arriving with a one-way ticket, as well as looking as hot as a chick could look. My gawd, she was stunning.
Customs questioned me and finally accepted the fact that she wasn’t a working girl, and that yes, I was paying for her flight home.
I wonder what ever happened to her?
I had a woman offer me money for sex, but she didn’t mistake me for a prostitute she just had a thing for me. I still pat myself on the back for that one.
Mistaken. Yes. A mistake, that’s what it was.
I’m not sure if this is true, but I thought this was an amusing story anyway.
This middle aged American couple were on a visit to somewhere in Mexico. Perhaps a bit off the usual tourist track. Anyway, the husband wanted to go inside a men’s clothing store to look around. The wife wanted to windowshop a bit so they made plans to meet outside the store in 15 minutes and parted ways. After the 15 minutes was up, the man came outside and his wife wasn’t there. After waiting around for a while, she still wasn’t there. So he went into panic mode because his wife was lost in Mexico!
He found her when he got to the police station. It seems that in that particular city, TPTB have ruled that any unaccompanied woman on the street is a prostitute, and she was picked up for not having a license for prostitution. So, she ended up going to court and they had to pay a find AND pay for a Prostitution License. Which, by the time they got home, they were laughing at and they had it framed and proudly display it on a wall in their home.