It’s funny how some people get so lost in thought that they forget to pay attention to what’s going on around them.

Imagine you were an IT tech fixing a register at an electronics store, and a customer walked up and expected you to ring them up? Would you give a long explanation? Or would you simply let them know you couldn’t help?

In the following story, one young man has this very thing happen. Here’s how he handled it.

Confused for a cashier

When this happened, I was in my late twenties and working as a freelance IT field technician.

I look very young for my age and can easily be mistaken for a late teenager.

Day to day, I would get different contracts, so often I wasn’t working at the same place for more than a day or two at a time.

He found the register and got started.

This day, I got a job that was to locate and upgrade a cash register. After driving to the site, I saw that it was Best Buy, and I happened to be wearing a blue polo that looked similar to a store uniform.

Once on site, and after some searching, I found that the machine in question was one of the registers near the front of the store. So, I got behind the register and started going through the repair list to complete the job.

After a while, a woman walked up to the register I was at and put her item on the counter without a word.

The woman must’ve realized what was going on.

Inwardly, I found this amusing, as not only was the light for the register off, but pieces of the register were on the counter as well.

I simply gave a smile and said, “Sorry, can’t help you” in somewhat broken English, and the lady quietly walked off to the other line she had been in previously.

I think it sank in that with the register in its current state, there was no way it could be used for quite some time.

Too funny! As least she went away easily.

Let’s check out what the readers over at Reddit think about it.

The same thing happened to this person.

As this comment explains, people pay no attention.

Here’s someone who was asked a silly question while holding a sledgehammer.

Well, okay, then.

It didn’t sound intentional, so she may have been embarrassed by the mistake.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who was on break when she was physically dragged back to the register by a customer.