Mistaking strangers for employees is an awkward but common misstep, especially in retail environments.

One man’s comfortable trip to the outlet mall took a cringeworthy turn when he mistook a fellow customer for store staff.

You’ll want to read on to find out how this one panned out.

It Was Me, I Was The Guy

I’m in my later 30s and used to rock skater attire. I now dress a little more professional (nice jeans and a polo), but still find skate shoes super comfortable.

Recently I went to the outlet mall to get a new pair of shoes at a Zumiez.

I walk in, but there aren’t any boxes with the shoes—just the model shoe.

He looks around for help, then flags the nearest person he sees.

I glance at the register, but no one is there.

Then I see a guy who looks like he’s putting shirts on a rack pretty close to me and just ask, “Hey, do you have these in size 13?”

This immediately leads to confusion.

Guy looks at me for a moment and just responds like most people in this sub, “Oh, uh, I don’t work here.”

I’m immediately mortified and apologize profusely, quickly explaining how I thought he was re-racking merchandise.

I go up to the register, where there is now an employee, and he starts looking up shoes for me.

He apologies again for his mistake, but he stands by the fact that it was an innocent misstep.

On my way out, the guy I asked is still there, and I sheepishly apologized again.

In my defense, he was wearing basically the same thing the employees were, and was in his late teens or very early 20s.

Still, whoops.

This sort of thing happens to the best of us.

What did Reddit have to say?

There’s really nothing this guy needs to feel bad about.

The fact that he gracefully accepted his mistake makes him a lot better than many other horror stories on the “I Don’t Work Here Lady” subreddit.

Some people are just plain rude about it.

Maybe he unwittingly stroked the guy’s ego.

Even the most self-assured shoppers can fall victim to retail confusion.

Next time, he’ll look a little more carefully for a name tag.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.