Judging someone based on their appearance can come back to bite you, especially in the workplace.

When one school faculty mistook a substitute teacher for a misbehaving student, his hasty assumptions landed him in an awkward situation with the principal.

Read on for the full story!

I’m a teacher. Give me back my phone.

I work as a substitute teacher at various local high schools.

I am 24 but obviously look younger according to this teacher.

AT = angry teacher.

AT: “Why aren’t you in uniform? And no phones during school!”

I thought he was talking to a student, so I ignored him.

It became clear he was talking directly to her.

AT: “Excuse me, don’t ignore me,” he said as he snatched my phone out of my hand.

Me: “What the heck, give that back, I’m not a student.”

So then he gets really mad.

AT: “That’s detention for swearing at a teacher. You will get your phone back at the end of the day, now you will come down to the office and tell the principal about how disrespectful you’re being.”

She decides she’s just going to let this play out.

By this point, I thought it would be funnier to let him complain to the principal, who I play netball with, and watch his reaction.

He was raging, saying I deserved to be suspended and that students always had their phones out, yada yada.

Then the principal broke the news to this angry teacher.

The principal and I were just trying not to laugh before she told him I was a teacher too.

Me: “Now give me my phone back. Don’t you have a class to teach? Because I do.”

I have never seen anyone go so red.

A little humility and a lot of embarrassment made for a day this teacher won’t soon forget.

What did Reddit have to say?

Apparently this student-being-mistaken-for-teacher phenomenon is more common than you’d think!

Many people seem to get themselves in similarly awkward situations.

Looking young does have its downsides.

This commenter’s situation started out awkward, but then ended up taking a whole new direction.

This teacher thought he was showing a student discipline, but it was him who landed in hot water!

Sometimes it’s the teacher who ends up getting schooled!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.