As I often preface my posts I am fully out in the world, have been for a number of years, and I accept that the UK is different from the US so, in replying to this thread we can take that as read. I'm more interested in the real experiences of those of us here who go out into the real world. I'm not so interested as to what people think might happen, but what does happen.

Something that we're quite used to seeing here is the reactions that we might get from the public and particularly SAs in shops and waitresses in cafes, bar and restaurants. These commonly seem to follow the line that they, the staff we interact with, only tolerate us becuaes it's their job and they need the pay check at the end of the shift. These posts are more or less always negative and I think come from a fear of what might happen if we shifted our boundaries rather than any real experience.

Indeed, one of the things here which has always surprised me is just how negative as a group and generally we seem to be.

It's often about the bogey man at the bottom of the garden. It's often about, no matter the experience, the SAs only treat us with respect when they have to and they all have a big laugh as soon as they leave the shop floor. If only we knew the truth of it, they all hate and despise us really.

The thing is, that my experience in the real world, doesn't come close to bearing this out. Indeed, my experience is the complete opposite.

Take yesterday. Me and the SO went out for lunch yesterday and we went to a cafe in a town about 30 miles from the city. We looked at the menus and the waitress came over to take our order. It was a busy place, there were plenty of staff. The one who served us could easily have left it to a colleague.

The thing is and this was a bit of a surprise, she greeted me by name. I'm not good with faces and, yes, she was vaguely familiar, but I didn't recognise her. She then said that she was Lisa and she used to work on a make-up counter in the department store in the city, about 40 miles away. The other thing is that I hadn't seen her, or even been to the city since we'll before the pandemic, so we're talking at least 3 years. When I was first coming out in the real world, I used to go to the make-up counter to learn what to do and to buy cosmetics. Lisa was one of the people who had helped me along the way.

But, she remembered me, she wanted to serve me, to interact and talk with me. It seems that she's recently moved from the make-up counter to the cafe as she thinks it's a better bet what with the economic turn down and it also has the benefit of being much closer to where she lives with her 4 year old.

So, maybe we'd all be a bit better off if we were a bit less negative and just realised that far more people in the real world embrace us than posts here might suggest.