Outsider knows how it feels to be mistaken for someone else. He was once mistaken for a Queensland special branch under-cover operative.
That case of mistaken identity occurred in the 1980s during the so-called “Joh for Canberra” campaign which was aimed at seeing the former Queensland Premier elevated to high office in the national capital — something which somehow resonates with recent events in Washington, but I digress.
The bottom line is that people are all too ready to make inappropriate assumptions and that is why a rather dapper young fellow from one of Money Management’s competitor publications was mistaken for a waiter just because he chose to wear a waistcoat to a media event.
Outsider endorses the young fellow’s wardrobe aspirations and his refusal to bring more wine.
Apart from anything else, the mistaking of someone’s identity just because they choose to wear a waist coat runs the risk of imposing rigid sartorial conformity on a profession which was once best-known for hard-drinking shabbiness.
And that reputation for hard-drinking shabbiness possibly explains why Outsider was once mistaken for a Queensland special branch undercover operative at a time before a certain Queensland police commissioner was jailed for corruption. But that is another story.
