It has happened to me many times in the past. Usually in retail stores. Less so as I’ve gotten older. I’ve never been mistaken for a valet but I’ve rarely been in places where there are valets. I think it often has to do with how you are dressed and if you look like you are shopping at the particular moment they are looking for help. I’m getting old and cranky so I probably don’t look very helpful anymore.
It happened to me in restaurants, but because both times my clothing resembled the staff’s uniforms.
Me too- in retail stores, people often assume I’m a manager, and ask me for help.
I think it says a lot more about the president and first lady being egotistical, pretentious and vain than it does about racism. Being mistaken for a valet, waiter or store clerk is neither unusual nor insulting, and it is neither racist nor unusual.
Consider this quote by Michelle: ““I tell this story – I mean, even as the first lady – during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. Because she didn’t see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn’t anything new,” Michelle Obama, who is 5’11”, said."
So, she assumes everyone in the store knew about her trip and knows exactly what she looks like. And she takes umbrage at being asked to get something down from a shelf. How dare the little people not know who she is and how important she is!!! “Even as the first lady!” I’m 6’2" and can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked to get something down from a high shelf in a store. Again, should I be insulted?
If these quotes had been from President and Mrs. Bush, or perhaps even Bill and Hillary Clinton, the reaction would have been to ridicule them for being arrogant and conceited.
I don’t dress well enough for that ever to happen to me!
Your political views are irrelevant to the thread.
I’m not getting the outrage here, I guess.
Not a doubt in my mind that the POTUS and Mrs POTUS have, simply because they’re black, been mistaken for “the help” a time or three.
But my first thought on the Michelle Obama scenario was, “well she’s quite tall, so that makes sense.”
I’ve been mistaken for an employee of an establishment, and also asked to get things off a shelf, or (not too long ago) asked to read the ingredients on a label in the grocery store for someone. These have been unremarkable incidents. I don’t regard “the help” as inferior so outrage wouldn’t occur to me. I’m white.
Well, I have taken a few college classes where I was mistaken for the instructor.
(I was a little (lot) older than the normal college student)
It used to happen to me all the time - I apparently have “retail slave” face. The one that took the cake was when a lady assumed I was working in a retail store, when I was shopping there with my jacket and purse on. Seriously?
I think looking cranky makes you look MORE like a retail slave. 
It’s not unusual – and the Obamas don’t say it is. Where do they say it’s insulting, and where to they say it’s racist?
Where does she say she takes umbrage or is insulted? Why are you putting words into their mouths? Telling a story about your experience doesn’t mean you’re saying “this was a terrible horrible racist experience and I’m so insulted!” – it’s just relating a story.
What is arrogant or conceited? They’re relating events they’ve experienced. How is telling a story about something that happened to you arrogant or conceited?
If the black male his age was wearing a suit, the President is hallucinating. And, if he’s not hallucinating, he’s lying/making it up.
it seems like quite construct there…we have to have so many elements lined up, that it makes what he says pointless.
Per the OP, when I hang arond a hospital, they usually ask if I am a doctor. I growl at them, and they are then quite convinced that I am a doctor.
When I was a prof I was mistaken at times for a staff member. Since this was Computer Science, they’d usually assume I was tech support. When I said I was a prof I’d get a look up and down. Sigh.
Look, folks, college profs wear gowns and mortarboards on rare occasions (in fact I never did). And we don’t wear tweed jackets with leather patches either. I wore a tie a handful of times and a sports coat never.
College profs are ex-graduate students. I knew people whose standard attire was sweat pants and t-shirts. Shoes optional.
I am often asked, when in the supermarket, to get things off high shelves for people. I’m pretty tall.
Once in a blue moon, depending on how I’m dressed, someone in a store will ask if I work there. I put that down to dress – if I’m wearing khakis and a blue button-down, I look like every retail/IT drone in the country. I’m an IT drone, not a retail drone.
I have witnessed a black partner in a major (top 10 nationwide) law firm be mistaken for a security guard in the lobby of my office building. He just kind of laughed it off. There’s no way this was for any reason other than that he was black. While the guards in this lobby do wear suits and ties, only an idiot (or a racist) could fail to notice the difference between the law partner’s expensive tailored suit and the cheap polyester suits worn by the lobby guards.
I am often mistaken for a clerk, when browsing in high-end boutiques geared toward rich women… think Brighton stores, and Pandora stores. I guess I have a classy-but-not-pampered sort of face, or something.
Careful F-P, your white privilege is showing
I made kind of the opposite mistake, in a rich area years ago I was going to a certain grocery just because they had stuff not available at the time elsewhere, and there were an awful lot of old black women shopping with mixed race or white kids. I assumed they were grandmothers and grandkids, my wife was with me once and she laughed and said those are maids! I was thrown off by why a maid would take a kid shopping.
She was right, apparently here in Trinidad maid means semi live in maid/nanny/cook/personal shopper etc, her grandmother was one and kids she raised from infancy were grandparents when she died and she still worked for the family!
I’ve been mistaken for an employee at multiple different stores. And I’ve been mistaken for the gardener when working in my yard.*
*Never had a good comeback line like the homeowner who was asked by a passerby how much he got paid for gardening work, and supposedly replied “Not much, but the lady of the house lets me sleep with her.”
**many, many times I’ve been turned down when trying to get into fancy Parisian department stores after hours.
I’ve been asked many times throughout my life. I wasn’t aware it was an insult.
Asked is different than assumed. I imagine it’d be a bit different if someone just handed you keys and said “easy on the paint job”.