Getting mistaken for an employee can be awkward, but how you respond can make it a whole lot worse.

So, what would you do if a customer approached you for help while you were shopping and assumed you worked there? Would you politely correct them? Or would you completely ignore them and keep doing what you’re doing?

In the following story, one man finds himself in this situation and decides to ignore the woman. Here’s what happened next.

Misled lady meets strange customer.

My friend Steve is often mistaken for an employee or manager when he goes shopping. Partly because of the way he looks and partly because of the way he acts.

Steve is a pretty clean-cut guy who often wears black slacks and a white button-up shirt. This makes him look the part. This, coupled with the fact that when he goes to buy something, he will pull every item off the shelf to inspect it, in search of the “best” one.

So one day Steve decides he needs to go buy some more vacuum cleaner attachments. He heads down to the local appliance store and sees that they have three sets of the one he wants. Steve removes all three boxes from the shelf and starts inspecting them.

The woman was irritated that he was ignoring her.

It’s at this point that the misled customer arrives. By what Steve’s wearing and how he’s acting, she thinks he’s an employee.

She asks Steve where to find some item, to which Steve simply glances at her, turns his back, and ignores her. This obviously irritates her, so she asks again. This time, Steve doesn’t even look, just kind of grunts at her and ignores her.

I suppose I should mention at this point that Steve is a bit quirky.

Then, the woman went and got the manager.

He has some social interaction issues that I can’t explain, along with other things. What I mean is that, while he is a successful salesman, he has real problems dealing with strangers who approach him. Going into total avoidance. It can come off as extremely rude.

Anyway, at this point, the lady is mad and has stormed away to find a manager.

Steve, after finding the best box of the three sets, begins opening each set and inspecting each vacuum attachment. Looking for the “best” one. He has them all spread out on the floor. Going through each one so he can assemble the “best” set.

Now the angry lady and the manager arrive. At which point, the manager is shocked to see Steve with all these open boxes and components on the floor.

The manager was more worried about what Steve was doing.

The angry lady says, “Him, he’s the one, that man is extremely rude,” to which Steve simply glances back and then returns to what he was doing.

The manager is not even listening to her. He’s focused on Steve and whatever the heck he’s doing. “Sir, sir, do you need some help?” Asks the manager.

By now, the lady realizes Steve’s not an employee and that he might be a little bit off. She slowly backs away, probably forgetting whatever it was that she wanted in the first place.

Of course, Steve got his way.

Then the manager says, “Sir, we don’t really encourage people to open up packages before they buy them.”

It’s at this point that Steve slips into entitled-customer mode, unaware that what he’s doing is wholly inappropriate. He starts to berate the manager about how “he should be treated better if they want to get his business” and blah blah blah, we’ve heard it all before.

Somehow Steve always seems to find some tolerant service people, and he was allowed to buy his perfect vacuum cleaner attachment set that day, and he was proud of it.

Wow! It’s amazing he hasn’t been kicked out of stores.

Let’s check out how the folks over at Reddit feel about Steve.

This reader would get annoyed by Steve.

Here’s a simple message.

For this person, it sounds like he may have Autism.

Now, this would just be mean.

He needs to work on his people skills. But as someone mentioned, it does sound like Steve could be on the Autism spectrum.

If you enjoyed this post, check out what happened when a woman tried to buy bread with WIC that wasn’t approved.