It’s always a little awkward when you realize you’ve asked the wrong person for help.

So, what would you do if you walked up to someone in a store thinking they worked there, but realized halfway through your sentence that they didn’t? Would you press them for an answer anyway? Or would you immediately apologize and walk away?

In the following story, a hardware store customer finds herself in this situation and chooses the latter. Here’s what she did.

I was the lady who asked a fellow customer for help 🤦‍♀️

I was at the hardware store to buy a bunch of things, including a closet rod.

Usually, at this store, you can check which aisle things are in online, but for some reason, the closet rods didn’t show an aisle. So I wandered around looking for them.

There was a man unloading a giant cart of plywood onto the shelves, so I asked: “Excuse me, do you know where I could find closet rods?”

She still feels bad about it.

No sooner do I do this than it dawns on me that he’s dressed in grey. All employees at this store wear bright orange.

Luckily, he was really nice about it.

“It seems like you’re in the right section, I don’t know. I don’t work here.”

So I apologized profusely and found a real employee. And I still feel like an idiot.

Too funny! These things will happen every now and again.

Let’s see if the people over at Reddit have ever done this.

This person thinks she did it wrong.

Here’s someone who’s been on both sides.

This reader admits to doing that very thing sometimes.

According to this comment, her behavior was not a problem.

It was a harmless mistake. And as long as you’re polite, there’s nothing wrong with asking someone anyway.

If you liked this post, check out this story about a kid whose first job was far different than they expected.