this is my uniform, this is my spout...

[Dentarthurdent]

Brain burp sighting coming up...

Okay. So I work in a national park for a concessionaire (a company which has a contract with the NPS to provide specific services within a park). Another concessionaire owns the grocery store. I just got my first paycheck and had taken some of the resultant money to load up on groceries, since I've been very strapped for cash for about a month and living mostly on bread, peanut butter, and noodles.

I thus have a cart loaded with enough food for two weeks, and I'm pulling up to the checkout line. I am always very careful when off-duty not to dress in anything resembling a uniform. I'm wearing men's corduroy pants (I'm a woman), a wallet with a chain, generic hiking/tennis shoe hybrids, and a white T-shirt celebrating a very obscure scientific study in a place nobody's ever heard of. An enormous pair of headphones is hanging around my neck. Note that the uniforms in the grocery store involve dark blue shirts and khaki pants.

This woman walks up to me and says "Excuse me. EXCUSE ME!"
"Yeah?"
"Do you work here?"
"No..."
"You don't?" As if she was waiting for me to stop lying and help her.
"No..." I looked down at my loaded cart, and back up at her, waiting for her synapses to fire.
"OH." and she stomped off toward the customer service desk, apparently not seeing any of the three cashiers she passed on her way there.

[Red_Dazes]

..I've got your problem.

You see the thing is.. you have shopped there enough times that you actually KNOW what you are looking for, where it is, and the best way to get there. The fact that you can navigate the store MUST mean you work there! I mean... it would be absurd if you knew your way around somewhere that well and DIDN'T work there....


.....or she might have just been dropped on her head as a child......

[Food Lady]

Even if she could put 2 and 2 together and figure you must work there, but be out of uniform, what would give her the right to bug you off the clock? It's happened to me, and the SC wanted my name so she could report me.

[Dentarthurdent]

you have shopped there enough times that you actually KNOW what you are looking for, where it is, and the best way to get there. The fact that you can navigate the store MUST mean you work there! I mean... it would be absurd if you knew your way around somewhere that well and DIDN'T work there....

The odd thing is, I'm pretty new to the area, and while I've been shopping there a few times, I still don't know how to find, say, tomato sauce without wandering aimlessly down three aisles first, and I have to go through the store three or four times before I'm done. The store is also set up backwards to 90% of the stores I've shopped in in the past 15 years or so.

[infinitemonkies]

A shark can sense blood from a mile away, and the scent of it drives him into a violent frenzied need to devour.

An SC can sense competence from across an entire store, and the scent of it drives her into a violent frenzied need to say something stupid.

[EricKei]

...and the SC wanted my name so she could report me.

So? Provide it, thusly:

"My name is John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. Would you like me to spell it out for you? (feel free to substitute Joan as need be)