Mistaken Identity

Yesterday, in a discussion at work about blogging for a living, a colleague mentioned his former manager, Bob. The company Bob now works for, Infoglide has daily blog posts at their website. Since Bob used to compliment my weekly newsletter, I thought I would check out the blog. First I stopped to check out Infoglide’s business focus. I read through the following:

Infoglide Software's proven identity resolution technology allows organizations to determine the true identities of their customers, vendors, and employees.

To my great amusement, I read the most recent entry entitled, Mistaken Identity Resolution.In this blog post, the writer has a number of examples of identity mistakes. Have you ever been mistaken on the street for someone famous, of worse, someone infamous?

I often have people approach me and say “don’t I know you?” They don’t. Back in my 20’s a friend of my husband’s often accused me of being a snob. He would see me drive by in my Volkswagen Beetle every day. He’d stand on the street corner and wave, and I would just drive on by. One day, I walked to the corner store, where I ran into the friend. “Well” he said, “now you don’t have any excuse to ignore me.” As he once again described how I continually drive by, how he’d wave and how I ignored him, along came a VW. He stopped short, pointed and said, “and there you go again!” Sure enough, there was a woman, who looked a lot like me, driving by in a black VW Beetle. In my teens, when I was much thinner and had long straight hair, people often said I could pass for Cher. Cher’s aged better than I have. Then again, she can afford a nip and tuck now and again. Why am I so amused at where Bob has found himself? Because Bob’s full name is Bob Barker. How fitting that he finds himself working to keep identities straight!