How many mistakes have you made today?

Most likely that will depend entirely on what time you’re reading this – but even if it’s early in the morning, the number probably won’t be small. According to researchers, our beautifully flawed species makes an average of eighty mistakes every day. Yes, eighty! It’s a massive number, and it shows how imperfect we really are.

But when we talk about mistakes, we’re not talking major, life-defining things like falling asleep at the wheel or ‘accidentally’ cheating at the work Christmas party. No, nothing like that. Those eighty mistakes, for most people at least, are completely innocent and minor things, all part of the fallibility of living an everyday human life.

Sleeping through your alarm. Missing your turning. Calling one of your cats by the other cat’s name. Spilling your drink. Leaving your umbrella in a coffee shop. None of these things are life-changing (at least, not usually), and most of them will be forgotten ten or so minutes afterwards (unless it starts raining and you need to double back a long way to rescue your umbrella, that is).

The woman in this story is completely tolerant of a mistake or two (as we all should be). So when she’s browsing a bookstore and is mistaken for an employee, she’s able to laugh it off – along with the customer who made the mistake. But as he explained, there was a good reason why he thought she was an employee.

Read on to find out why.

“Dude, she doesn’t work here”

My store (big name office supply store) has a dress code of either a red or black shirt with jeans and a small earpiece headset.

I work in the print department, so I get to have a fancy black apron with the store’s name with big, white lettering on the front. These are just general context clues for customers to know that I do work at my store.

Next door to us is a big name book store, where they don’t really have a dress code.

They were currently having a sale and, after starting my 15 minute break, I decided to go see what books I could find.

Let’s see what happened while she was browsing on her break.

I was at a middle table that is directly in the main walkway of the store. I was just picking up books and seeing which I liked when this guy walks by with his friend and begins to ask me questions regarding a certain book.

Before I could even say a word, his friend speaks up, laughingly stating “dude, she doesn’t work here.”

The first guy quickly notices my outfit and apron and begins to apologize profusely, saying all he saw was the headset and just assumed I worked here.

I was laughing too and said it was no problem, it happens more than you think.

With his friend still laughing, the two men walked away. I hope they found someone who did, in fact, work there.

It’s easy to understand the guy’s mistake – especially in a store that doesn’t have a staff dress code.

The woman had a headset on, so it would be logical to assume that she worked in the place she was wearing it.

Luckily everyone seemed quite chill about the exchange!

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.

Let’s see what Redditors had to say about this.

This person agreed that headsets can be misleading.

While others had had similar experiences with less pleasant outcomes.

Meanwhile, this Redditor hoped that the unpleasant mistaken identity situations were simply a loud minority.

It’s absolutely true that the majority of ‘I don’t work here, lady’ stories that we hear about are ones with less than pleasant outcomes. Ones where the innocent customer who is shopping for their toilet paper or whatever is verbally attacked by the person who is so sure that they work in the store, and so determined that they will get them to help. And that says a lot about the customer in question.

Because someone who would rather berate a member of the public for not being an employee, act frustrated toward an innocent bystander because of their own mistake, or insist that they do in fact work there (even though they absolutely do not) is so far from being a good person it’s almost laughable. What has to happen to a person in life for them to be as rude as some that plenty of people have had the misfortune to bump into? What gives them the right to be so entitled?

So when a story like this is posted – one with the customary mistaken identity, but without the all too frequent abuse, it’s like a breath of fresh air. A reminder that, despite our many flaws, the human species does have its redeeming qualities. A testament to the fact that, despite what the internet may portray, most people are actually quite nice. Something we need to remember a little more frequently, perhaps.