Just last weekend, I threw Celtling a birthday party at the local Petting Zoo. While standing in line for the hay ride a complete stranger looked at me and said “Are you Au Pair?” He said it kinda slowly, like he expected me to have trouble with English.
I was a bit stunned by the non-sequiter and hemmed and hawed a bit. Then I finally said “No but perhaps you know me from [Large Corp.].” He said, “No, I just know a lot of au pairs, from Sweden.” Then turned back to his companians.
This. A million times this. The puppy dog look they get as they worship the vast wealth of technical knowledge they assume is locked inside your head after you successfully trial-and-error your way through a technical problem is just disturbing, because you know, you just know, that eventually you’ll be called on to save a system you can’t save, and they’ll be crushed.
When I was visiting France, quite a few people thought I was French (including a group of Germans and an American). I think it was because I was wearing a French-style hat and my clothes did not scream “American tourist.” It happened at least four times after I got the hat.
I posted on here about this once before. I walked into a large Barnes and Noble I had never been to before, looking for a technical book or something, and found an employee to ask for directions.
I started to ask “Where are the…”, but before I can finish, she cuts me off and says “Self-help books? They’re on the 2nd floor, left of the cookbooks”.
For a long time, unbeknownst to me, my now-wife thought that I was a huge Ricky Martin fan and part of his fan community.
I didn’t find out that she thought that until well after a year of dating. I’m foggy on the exact reasons she thought this but I think it came down to 1) me being friendly with someone who really was part of that community, and 2) one time I told her that a guilty-pleasure song I enjoyed was “La Vida Loca.”
My city has an extremely large population of crows. In the winter they all roost in a few-block-square area not too far from the main library. Beginning in mid-afternoon there’s a steady stream of crows winging their way back “home” from the countryside. It’s weird but kind of neat at the same time.
I’m checking out some books at the main library one afternoon in February and it’s clear by looking through the windows that the crows are on the move. The clerk looks up and says something about the crows, then says to me “You know about crows, don’t you? Why do they DO that?”
I had to admit I didn’t know much of anything about crows. Still don’t know if she had me mixed up with someone else who comes into the library a lot to check out bird books, or if I just look like the kind of person who knows about crows.
(The books I checked out that day had nothing to do with birds or nature. And though I check out a lot of books, not many are from that section of the shelves. So that’s not it.)
YES! Just because I have a smartphone and often have my Kindle with me doesn’t mean I have a clue why your printer is doing that thing or how to get started making that app you think is a great idea. Sorry.
I used to get this too, mostly from family members. I got a job with Microsoft doing support for Windows, and suddenly I had family members calling me every day to help them fix 3rd party software problems. Hey, call customer support like everyone else!
I had several people I worked with assume I was Jewish, which I’m not. I think it’s partly because my name (which is actually French) is a common Jewish name.
My weird neighbor assumed I was Jewish. I don’t mean just ethnically Jewish, but religiously so, and he figured this was important enough that he told half the neighborhood about it. I have no idea where any of this came from, except that there’s a reason I called him my weird neighbor.
I’ve also been mistaken for a lesbian several times. Usually when a woman was trying to flirt with me, and what can I say, I flatter easily
As soon as people find out that I teach Taekwondo, they immediately say, “Oh, please don’t hit me” or something equally stupid. As if I woke up that morning, decided to beat the snot out of a random person, and they’re it.
I took a class on the sociology of death & dying in college, and the professor had a woman come in who was responsible for preparing the dead in the Jewish faith (I can’t remember what it’s called, but her job had a name.) Somewhere in the discussion it came up that I was Catholic, but it wasn’t discussed in any kind of detail at all- just that I grew up Catholic. For the last class of the semester, she came back to talk with us again. At one point she said something like “hell” or “damn” or some variation thereof and then looked at me and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I know you’re very religious.”
I thought it was hilarious. Though I do go to church fairly regularly, I would never, EVER call myself “very religious”, let alone be offended by a word as innocuous as “damn.”
For a while there was somebody online who ‘knew’ I was a doctor. I never claimed to be, and I never really figured out why she thought so. Well, unless it was because she was totally crazy.
Once in a Target, a bunch of people mistook me for an employee and asked me where they might find such-and-such. To be fair, I was wearing a red sweater and khakis.
At a former job, one of my coworkers was telling someone else about the great time we’d had at happy hour the night before. The other guy was all, “**Snickers **drinks?” Yes, yes she does. Apparently I unintentionally give off the teetotaller vibe.
I work as a proprietary trader at a trading firm. After saying what I do for a living, numerous people have said, “Really? You don’t seem like a trader.” I’m not sure exactly what they assume traders are like. I’m guessing quite a few are thinking of Hollywood’s presentation of traders as testosterone fueled, hyper-aggressive hot shots. In reality, most traders are socially awkward math/computer science nerds. This leaves me confused as to which one I’d prefer to seem more unlike.
This for me, as well. I work in a field where I think the vast, vast majority of folks DO have college degrees, so maybe the assumption isn’t that strange.
:eek: 