The fact that two people happen to speak the same language may not automatically result in these two persons understanding each other. I observed that in some cases a misunderstanding is almost inevitable, if someone tries to talk shop about a subject he/she is actually not familiar with. Depending on the situation this can be amusing, annoying (for the victim) or embarrassing (for the poseur).

Some time ago, I went into a shop for ordering a DSL connection (they were resellers for a large German ISP). The shop assistant handed over some forms to be filled out, including a desired password for a customer login. Being familiar with programming my first thought was to make sure what characters can be used at all and thus asked her, whether only alphanumeric or any printable characters are allowed. Energetically she shook her head and replied: “Nah, you can only use letters and numbers.” That response irritated me, of course. “Uhm, excuse me, but that’s exactly what I’ve been talking about: Alphanumeric means letters and numbers.” Having realised the nonsense she had emitted, the shop assistant opted for a sorry excuse which I cannot remember anymore, but her face expression looked interesting once her authority was undermined by her faux pas. Somehow I was left with an impression that I could not trust this shop and would be better off not to visit it a second time.

I also remember the communication with this woman was weird: Whenever she looked at me it seemed it was not really me but like someone behind or next to me she was talking to. Sometimes her reactions did not seem appropriate to my questions or remarks and suggested a familiarity that did not exist. Apparently I reminded her of someone else and somehow she must have had the funny notion of actually talking to that person instead to a stranger. How the shop assistant was able to look at me without fixating me with her pupils is something I would like to learn. Warped lenses? Or was she just afraid of looking people into the eyes, because that might reveal other aspects of posing?