Mistaken for Servant

Ah, it's a beautiful day — you won an all-expense-paid trip to the Schwing-Ding Five-Star hotel! Aren't you excited?

Odd how the Bellhops are wearing the same type of shirt as you do. Oh look, it's Lady Drunk coming right over — gee they're so -

Oh? She wants you to walk her dog? Groom it? And there she goes, leaving the annoying yappy thing in your hands before your mouth could form around "Wait, I'm not...?".

Congrats, you just got mistaken for the hired help!

This is an almost anytime, anywhere trope that can be Played for Laughs or could more rarely be used in more serious works. This tends to play out in four ways:

• The Helpless Everyman who is unable to correct the other person's error and ends up stuck with either a live creature they have to keep safe until they can give it back, or a valuable that's sought after by some less scrupulous fellows. Generally he gets no respect for the effort. Sometimes, if the person who mistook them for the help is a Jerkass, they can retaliate.
• The scoundrel who promptly takes advantage of the situation, generally to poke fun at the victim's supposed bias or stupidity — such as a wealthy older man who presumes that a younger person at the posh club is a valet and gets his Mercedes-Benz stolen.
• A Prince and Pauper situation where for one reason or another, a person of status is mistaken for a servant, or even a slave and is forced to work — learning humility and kindness toward the lower class.
• The character is a spy, or has another reason to want access to a certain person's possessions, and just happens to be mistaken for the hired help for the fancy dinner bash the other person is throwing.

Notably, especially in older works — ethnicity is sometimes a factor whether or not someone is mistaken for the hired help.

Examples of Mistaken for Servant include:

Advertising

• Rowan Atkinson's Johnny English character (an incompetent spy) began life on a series of Barclaycard commercials, one of which had him mistaking an important foreign diplomat for the plumber that Barclaycard had sent to fix the broken toilet.

Anime & Manga

• In Gundam Wing some of the students at the Sanc Kingdom's school remark that Heero must be Quatre's servant boy or bodyguard when the pair arrives to meet with Relena. Quatre uses this to smuggle Heero inside the school without raising any eyebrows.
• In Area 88, Ryoko first meets Shin while he's a student at a flight school. She takes him for a skycap and asks him to stow her luggage.
• In Dragon Ball Super when future Trunks gets introduced to the god of destruction he at first mistakes Whis for the god. And he mistakes Beerus for his pet.
• Otaku no Musume San: Taeko gets mistaken for a waitress in an Akihabara Maid Cafe, because on the one hand all waitresses on that day were dressed up in school uniforms (and Taeko was wearing one) and, on the other hand, she looks older than her actual age. A completely reverse case (mistaken for a schoolgirl) happens once to her mother who looks younger than her actual age, and is actually a waitress in a Cosplay Cafe.
• In several versions of Ghost in the Shell, the Major is mistaken for a Robot Girl servant because of her prosthetic body conforming to certain standards.
• Hanaukyo Maid Tai: When the Ryuuka first appeared, she mistook Taro for a new servant.
• In Medabots, Ikki thinks Karin is either doing chores around the rich private school she attends because she's being punished, or because she's poor and is doing it to pay for tuition. Turns out, Karin's doing the chores because she likes doing them.

Comicbooks

• In Wonder Woman Plus Jesse Quick, Jesse has a meeting with a museum director and someone Jesse assumes is the director's secretary. A fight breaks out in the street. As Jesse runs outside at superspeed, she realizes A) the secretary is keeping up with her, B) the secretary is ripping off her clothes to reveal a Wonder Woman outfit, and C) "Oh god, I was about to ask her for a cup of coffee!"
• Modern work in which race is a factor: In Dykes to Watch Out For, Clarice and Toni (African American and Latina, respectively) are looking to buy a house in the suburbs (much to Clarice's chagrin). They bring their son Raffi (Toni's biological son) to check out a particular neighborhood, and while having lunch at a park a woman comes up to Clarice asking her if she's one of the new nannies in the neighborhood. Clarice of course is quite offended, and tells her off for assuming that just because she's black she must be hired help, while the woman tries to explain that she assumed so only because "he's obviously not yours".
• In Alex, the title character and his American boss Cyrus are invited to a grouse shoot, for which Cyrus buys a brand new set of tweeds to wear (having never been to one), despite repeated warnings to get a used set instead. At the shoot, Cyrus gets tipped by another guest, who believed he was the gardener breaking in the new tweeds for the lord of the house, as is normal in high society. The tipper is acutely embarassed when informed, but due to the Values Dissonance, Cyrus has no idea of the insult or why he has been given the money.
• Victor Mancha from The Runaways runs into this a few times; namely, the Super Skrull Xavin often refers to him as the 'house android' due to androids' status in his own culture.
• Fables had this happen with Gepetto whenever he went to court to meet the emperor or attended an official meeting. Even though he was a high power in the adversary's empire, due to his poor appearance many people would mistake him for hired help and order him around. Only a select few, such as the wooden soldiers and high officials, actually knew who he really was.
• In Candorville, Lemont (in that arc, a speaker for the literary conference being held for his new book release, the other speaker being Stephen King) is given the keys to an obnoxious woman's expensive car, is insulted by her for beign a sub-par valet, and turns the keys in to the hotel Lost and Found (getting sympathy from the Lost and Found director). Thanks to the lady's inability to tell the difference between a black man and a hispanic or possibly middle-eastern man (and according to Lemont, thanks to Karma), she reports the wrong name, race, and height in the complaint to the hotel and buys three hundred copies of his book for her literature club.

Film

• In the the Live-Action Mortal Kombat movie, Johnny Cage thought Liu Kang was simply a bag boy (or possibly a loitering nobody who wouldn't mind earning a few extra bucks) and foisted his excessive luggage on him. Liu Kang retaliates by taking the money and immediately dumping the luggage into the water.

Cage: "Thank God I didn't tell him to park my car."

• In Seven Days, Parker was mistaken for a butler by the princess. Insulted, he took her glass and threw it away.
• In Casino Royale, a guy mistakes James Bond for a valet for the resort they are in and orders Bond to park his car. Bond coolly replies "Certainly, sir" and proceeds to crash it, causing a commotion which he takes advantage of to sneak into the hotel's security room. And to top it all off, he tosses the guy's keys into a hedge.
  • In Never Say Never Again, Domino mistakes James Bond for the masseur. As she is an attractive woman in a towel, he doesn't correct her and does the job.
• In Bringing Down the House, the Gold Digger mistakes Queen Latifah's character for a waitress at the club. Not a good idea...
• In Chairman Of The Board, Edison reports to the boardroom of McMillan Industries for his first day of his new job there; as soon as he gets there, the old men who make up the company's board of directors immediately mistake him for a gofer (understandable, given that Edison is dressed casually and is played by Carrot Top) and give him a bunch of orders for coffee, tea, muffins, doughnuts, etc. It's only when Edison brings back all of what they'd asked for that they learn who he really is: when Mr. McMillan had recently died, he bequeathed Edison all of his stock in McMillan Industries, making him the new chairman.
• In Johnny English, the protagonist not only mistakes French prison entrepreneur (and Big Bad) Pascal Sauvage for a waiter but proceeds to make a bunch of disparaging remarks about the French right in front of him. However, he seems to take it in stride:

Pascal Sauvage: [to English] Pascal Sauvage. The jumped-up Frenchman. [...] Of course, you are Johnny English. I've heard all about you. And between you and me, I'm not so keen on the French myself.

• In Confessions of a Shopaholic Becky Bloomwood is mistaken for a waitress at an important dinner. In the catering manager's defense, her black-and-white dress looks exactly like what the waitresses are wearing.
• Exploited in A Hard Day's Night. As Paul's Grandfather is gambling at the Le Cercle club, he runs out of money. So he writes a "tab" on a piece of paper, puts on a plate, and he places a napkin on his arm and walks over to a patron, who "pays" him. He then uses the money to get back in the game.
• In Air America, Senator Davenport arrives in Vietnam. On the airfield, he hands his suitcase to General Lu Soong, mistaking the general for a servant.
• Happens twice to Taye Diggs in Go because he's a black man wearing a gold blazer. First a man in the bathoom tips him for handing him a paper towel, and then a man tosses him the keys to his Ferrari, mistaking him for a valet. At this second incident, Diggs has had enough and takes a joyride in the sportscar as revenge.
• In the opening scene of the film Mash, Hawkeye notices that the zipper on his bag is busted, and uses his rank insignia to pin it closed while waiting on his driver. Duke shows up, sees Hawkeye without insignia, and tells 'the driver' to hop to it. Hawkeye goes with it, effectively stealing the jeep, and doesn't bother correcting Duke until they are eating lunch at the 4077th and are introduced to Col Blake.
• In the 1951 movie The Mating Season, a young bride mistakes her new working class mother-in-law for 'help'. Ouch. Fortunately the mother-in-law thinks it's an understandable mistake, but the girl is both humiliated and furious at her husband for 'playing along'.
• In Slumdog Millionaire, Jamal is standing under a waiting spot for tours of the Taj Mahal when a German couple, assuming he is a tour guide, ask for a tour. Jamal initially tries to tell them that he is not a worker there, but when the woman offers money for his services, he decides to play along. He makes up a wildly inaccurate backstory for the Taj Mahal, but luckily for him, the couple are apparently completely ignorant about the landmark.

Literature

• In The Whipping Boy, the titular boy — who unlike the spoiled prince had learned to read and write (The Prince shirked his duties) and is so well-behaved that the highwayman who took the two thought the clueless prince was the servant.
• Alice in Wonderland had the titular girl being mistaken by the White Rabbit for his maid Mary-Ann, allowing her to get into more trouble.
• In Babysitters Club, Mallory's Black Best Friend Jessi was mistaken by Mal's little sister for a maid. Turned into an Aesop when Mal explains that the only time her sister had seen black people in their predominantly white neighborhood was when a cleaning service sent two black ladies to the house.
• A variant is referenced in several PG Wodehouse stories where someone visiting a stately home meets the proprietor wandering about the gardens in his casual clothes and assumes him to be the gardener. Hilarity invariably ensues. In the novel A Damsel in Distress, this happens to Lord Marshmoreton every six months or so; he finds it funny and tends to play along, to the extent of putting on a rustic accent.
• G. K. Chesterton uses this in at least two of his Father Brown detective stories. In The Queer Feet the thief deliberately uses the fourth version of the trope to masquerade alternately as a waiter and as one of the gentleman guests. In The Strange Crime of John Bulnois the title character takes advantage of the second version to get out of a party he doesn't wish to attend.
• Perry Rhodan is Mistaken For Engineer at least once. Being an all-around nice guy, the benevolent immortal nigh-god emperor of all humanity ends up repairing a snooty cadet's spaceship.
• In Xanth, the Magician Humphrey was mistaken for an assistant by one of the supplicants--it doesn't help that by then he looks like a shrunken gnome, and he plays along for a good while.
  • Also, King Roogna from the same series, whose talent was manipulating the magic of living things. In the middle of preparing for a battle, the protagonist came across a man in old clothes messing around with a cherry tree (he was turning them into cherry bombs), and assumed he was a gardener...
• Interestingly played with in The Good Earth, as Wang Lung, a rich land owner who still works in the fields himself, realizes that other people would probably think he is his son's servant if seen side by side, as the son doesn't work himself and is well-dressed. Coupled with the fact that the son is starting to get rebellious, it kind of ticks Wang Lung off.
• In the book Golondrina de Invierno ("Winter Sparrow"), the male lead is mistaken by the main female as the manager of his huge country state.
• In George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novella "The Hedge Knight", Dunk is confused with a stableboy by a pompous prince. And that bald kid that Dunk thinks is a runaway stableboy? Turns out to be said pompous prince's little brother.
• In a short story in Len Deighton's Declarations of War, a travelling salesman stops at a garage to fill up with petrol. He recognises the man he thinks is the mechanic from their army days when they served together and is quite patronising towards him. He drives off, never realising that the 'mechanic' was actually the local lord who used the facilities at garage to tune his own car as part of the rent arrangements with the owner.
• Tales of the Frog Princess: The Dragon Princess — Lord Eduardo mistakes Princess Millie's cousin Lord Francis and her best friend, Princess Zoe, for her servants because of their simple traveling clothes. The next morning, Ed still doesn't believe that Zoe is a princess, and, though her father really is a prince, Zoe doesn't dare mention that she's Princess of the Vampires. Eduardo insults her. This infuriates Francis.
• In The Mountains of Mourning, when Harra first sees Miles he's just returning from a swim, wearing only his trunks and leg braces, and she clearly doesn't know who he is. Miles entertains the thought that she might think that he's the court jester.
• In one of the Just William books, William develops a crush on an actress appearing in pantomime at a theatre near him, and sneaks into her hotel to try and meet her. Hilarity Ensues, including his being mistaken for a laundry delivery boy.
• In Unseen Academicals, Glenda thinks that Lady Margolotta's librarian is Lady Margolotta and vice versa, so while she doesn't ask the "servant" to do anything for her, she does end up angrily complaining about the way Margolotta has treated Nutt and only afterwards realizes that she might not have been talking to the librarian after all.
• In Circle of Magic, Tris is mistaken for a servant and is briefly annoyed before looking down at her nice but plain and sensible dress and understanding why someone might mistake her for a lady's maid.
• In a short story by Diana Wynne Jones that takes place in the Chrestomanci universe, the protagonist and her mother are let in by a plain (to them) woman in fancy attire, and the protagonist's mother whispers that she's "rather extravagantly-dressed for a servant." At the end of the story, the woman is too embarrassed to speak because the woman was Chrestomanci's wife.
• Combined with Younger Than They Look in Teacher Trouble by Alexander McCall Smith, in which a girl starting at a new school is mistaken for a teacher and put in charge of a class.
• In Septimus Heap, the Guardian of the House Of Foryx mistakes Beetle for being Jenna's servant in Queste, causing a rebuff by Jenna.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of Hustle, Mickey approaches a mark and is told to bring the man a drink. He quickly corrects the assumption.
• Arrested Development: Lucille is at a party for the Desi awards (given to the stars of Spanish telenovelas), where most of the attendees are Latino. She complains, "A sea of waiters, and no one will take a drink order!"
• In The Fast Show TV spinoff movie Ted And Ralph, Ralph takes his groundskeeper Ted to a fancy party; while everyone assumes Ted is a landed gentleman, Ralph is taken for a waiter, and is too shy to correct anyone on this point.
• Nina on Just Shoot Me once gave the Chinese Minister of Culture her room key. "I can't help it if the entire nation dresses like bellboys!"
  • In another, Elliot mistakes a client for a delivery boy. Coincidentally he is also Chinese (or possibly Chinese American).
• Hyacinth does this at least twice to the owners of the stately homes she likes to visit on Keeping Up Appearances.
• In Scrubs, this trope was shown to be the reason Marco (Carla's little brother) hates Turk, as Turk had mistaken him for a valet at a funeral when they first met, and Turk was kinda a dick to him when he thought he was a valet too.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had an Inverted Trope racial version when an aunt and her new husband came to visit at the Banks' mansion — the family assumed the white man carrying in luggage was a taxi driver or somesuch, and tried to tip him and shoo him away, instead welcoming in the (black) driver with open arms, leading to a very awkward long pause when the real couple embraced and they realized their mistake.
  • Their valet Geoffrey pulls another when a (black) neighbour woman drops by and asks him for cleaning tips. He assumes she is a maid and a budding (and reciprocated) romance springs up. Until it turns out she's actually a wealthy and high-status socialite who is just humble enough to want to clean up her own mess.
• Occurs off-screen in one of the CeeBee Awards episodes of Frasier: Niles has been nominated for a technical award, which turns out not to be in the same glitzy area as the presenter awards, but in a small room down the corridor. When he gets back, he reports that he was the only person there wearing a tuxedo, and had to keep explaining he wasn't the waiter.
• In an episode of Law & Order, the detectives went to an airport to talk to the girlfriend of a victim. The girlfriend promptly saw the Hispanic detective and started handing him her luggage.
• Happens in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry was driving someplace (forgot where) and sees a black man in a suit standing on the curb. Larry assumes he's a valet and tries to hand him his keys, which obviously offends him. Larry's horrified at his mistake and tries to apologize, but the man tells him off and walks away. And Wanda Sykes happened to see the whole thing.
• While Martha Jones spends the majority of her time stuck in 1912 with an amnesiac Doctor when they get attacked by vicious aliens she's having none of it. Unfortunately, even when she'd desperately trying to save everyone's life, people still take her for an ignorant and deranged servant because of her skin colour, sex and class.
• On A Different World, Whitley goes barging into Dwayne and Ron's apartment, completely ignoring the woman who is cleaning the place. When she's unable to find Dwayne, she asks the woman to tell him that she was there and compliments her on the cleaning job, telling her that it about time the boys hired a housekeeper. The woman says, "Oh, so YOU'RE the Whitley Dwayne keeps talking about?" Whitley asks how she knew that. "Because Dwayne tells his MOTHER everything." Cue the Oh Crap look on Whitley's face and her pitiful attempts to apologize before having the door slammed in her face.
• On an episode of The Bold And The Beautiful, several characters are hanging out at the local bar when one of them asks another to get her a drink. Imagine her shock when she's informed that she's one of her coworkers, not a waitress at the bar.
• Played with in a episode of Seinfeld in which Elaine allows herself to be mistaken for a building janitor because she's hiding out there in order to have Chinese food delivered.
• In Ugly Betty, Betty is about to meet her boyfriend's mother for the first time. Things get off to a bad start, however, when the mother thinks she's there to interview for a maid job.
• In the Midsomer Murders episode "Market for Murder", Troy meets the local lord while he is up a ladder tending to some peeling wallpaper and assumes he is the handyman.
• In a Murphy Brown episode, Murphy starts dating a much younger man. When he shows up at FYI with flowers, the rest of the team mistakes him for a delivery man sent by Murphy's "new boyfriend" (Jim even tips him) and keep chatting away with speculation as to what said boyfriend is like. By the time Murphy arrives to introduce him, Corky is already whispering to Frank "Why is the delivery boy still here?"
• In an episode of Da Ali G Show, the eponymous character introduces Jarvis Cocker as his next guest. When Cocker walks onto the set, Ali asks what he's doing there and says that the cleaners are supposed to wait until the show is over.
• On a Thanksgiving Episode of That 70s Show, Eric's grandpa mistakes Fez for a servant.

Theatre

• Rossini's Opera Cinderella has the prince and his valet trading places to invoke this trope intentionally. The prince uses it as an opportunity to learn the real character behind the women vying for his hand. The valet uses it to... eat as much fancy food and talk to as many pretty girls as possible, as well as relishing in the fact that the prince has to bow to him.
• The obscure Renaissance play Thomas of Woodstock has a scene in which the title character (who is Duke of Gloucester, and the king's uncle) is mistaken for a servant by an overdressed courtly messenger, because of his plain clothing. When the truth is revealed, the Duke insists the courtier pay him the sixpence he offered for walking his horse, remarking that it's the first honest work he's done in forty years.
• In Of Thee I Sing, when Wintergreen is being received in the Smoky Gentlemen's Club as the National Campaign Committee's presidential nominee, he mistakes vice-presidential nominee Throttlebottom for a waiter, and snatches away the drink Throttlebottom has poured for himself. "And get me one of those dill pickles, will you?"
• In Miss Saigon, as Kim arrives at Chris' hotel room, Chris' wife Ellen absently tells her, "don't turn the bed yet". Kim informs her that she's not the maid. It's one of the few racially-based examples that doesn't have Unfortunate Implications--they're in an Asian country and it's a reasonable assumption on Ellen's part.

Video Games

• In Baldur's Gate, you can obtain the golden pantaloons from a noble at the Friendly Arm Inn who mistakes you for the maid. Maybe the real maids wear armor and carry swords, too.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, a visit to one of the cantinas on Taris can result in you being mistaken for a waiter by one of the richer customers. Again, she appears not to notice that you're also holding a deadly weapon; however, trying to explain the situation (even politely) results in the noblewoman storming out of the cantina in a huff, and reappearing close to the entrance with two armed thugs.
  • The worst part? She runs away and isn't a valid target, so it's impossible to kill her. ...She started it.
• In Dragon Age Origins, city elves can be mistaken for labor workers in Ostagar. Can be a bit sad, since back home in the Alienage neighbors of yours were being evicted and forced to work there. We don't assume they're treated very nicely.
  • The quartermaster will mistake any elf for a servant. Even if the elf is wearing face markings that designate him/her as one of the elves who swore never again to submit to human authority, or, more interestingly, wearing an outfit and a weapon that suggest that he/she is a mage. He backs down fairly quickly though, and seems incredibly embarrassed once he realizes his mistake.
• An odd example occurs in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Ike is consoling Jill after the death of her father, when a Daein woman from the region approaches them. She recognizes Jill as Shiharam's daughter, and assumes that Ike is her bodyguard. The woman immediately starts praising Jill's father and remarking about how cruel and heartless it was for the Crimean Army -which Ike is the general of- to kill him, leading to a very sad (and awkward) moment for Jill and Ike.

Western Animation

• The title character of Rocko's Modern Life was once mistaken for a movie theater usher because his shirt is the same as their uniforms.
• In an episode of Futurama, Fry was mistaken for a worker at the Past-o-rama theme park because of his ridiculously outdated clothing (although not as ridiculous as that of the guy making the mistake, who wore Renaissance attire at what is ostensibly a 20th century-themed park).
• In King of the Hill, Hank tries to impress a potential customer by playing on his stereotypes of Texas. He gets Peggy to dress up in a very stereotypical cowgirl outfit, and they go to a Texan themed restaurant. Naturally, Peggy turns out to be wearing the exact same outfit as the workers there, which gets her mistaken for a worker even by the other workers.
  • Cotton also seems to think Kahn is Hank's servant, as whenever he visits he always tells Kahn to bring in his bags. However, Cotton was able to correctly identify Kahn as Laotian at first glance (Hank and the gang kept asking him if he was Chinese or Japanese even after he said he was from Laos).
• On the first episode of Drawn Together, Princess Clara mistook Foxxy Love for a maid. Clara's father refers to Foxxy as a "servant girl" on seeing her.
• As Told by Ginger: Courtney thinks this of Sasha in the summer camp episode.

Urban Legend

• A common story of this type is a rich, older white woman who stops at the yard of a house and sees a man (usually Black or Latino) doing some yard work. She ask him how much he's paid. The man, being insulted and rather clever, answers that the lady of the house lets him sleep with her; the lady being, naturally, the man's wife.

Real Life

• Improv Everywhere staged a hilarious version of this in a Best Buy when they had 80 people in blue polo shirts and khakis hang around inside.
• Any store with a specific shirt color or outfit combo (like Kinko's blue shirt and khakis or Pizza Hut's Red Polo) can cause inattentive shoppers to pester other shoppers who happened to be wearing the same color under the belief that they are workers.
  • Or indeed any shopper who spends a moment taking a close look at something on shelves.
  • Wandering around a supermarket wearing a suit could often lead to being mistaken for the store manager in the UK, though nowadays managers are issued a slightly fancier variation of the regular store uniform.
• A woman mistook Karl Malone, a future Hall of Fame basketball player, for a skycap while he was waiting to pick up his brother at the Salt Lake City airport (he played for the Utah Jazz). Malone obligingly carried the woman's bags to her car and revealed himself only when she offered him a tip afterward.
• A couple years ago the magazine Bust had an article written by a black woman whose daughter, as it turns out, was born with very fair skin (the father was white), and how she dealt with the assumptions that she must be a nanny. She acknowledged that in the area of Manhattan she lives in, there are a lot of black nannies out and about with white children so it's not entirely Unfortunate Implications, but she gradually learned how to handle that particular assumption.
• Ruth Reichl recounts a time she was taken for kitchen staff in Tender at the Bone.
• Walter Koenig was once mistaken for a bellhop at a hotel, when wearing his Starfleet uniform during a public appearance.
• Apparently Lord Halifax, Britain's pre-WWII foreign minister, at a meeting with Hitler, got out of his car and handed the Führer his hat. Naturally, this is an Acceptable Targets use of this trope.
• Agent Cicero was the Valet to the British Ambassador. And naturally valets would never give their master's secrets to the Germans...
• Several stories on Not Always Right.
  • In most of those types of stories on that site and similar ones, the customer 'flips' when the other person refuses to help them, refuse to believe them, and then complain to the management (or even, in one case, to the management of the store where the person did in fact work at).
• This can happen a lot if you've just come off work or are on lunch break and in another store where the uniform is similar to yours. And sometimes not even then.
• A man waiting for an interview as a salesman in an antique store was mistaken for an employee of that same store. Knowing he had ample time before his interview, the man started helping the customer. By the time the owner was ready for the interview, the man had sold $800 worth of antiques. He got the job.
• At a Washington dinner, Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to Barack Obama mistook General Peter Ciarelli, the second-most-senior General of the US Army for a waiter, since she wasn't wearing her glasses and could only see the stripes on his pants when he was standing next to her. Apparently the chestful of medals didn't register. The General, for his part, thought it was funny.
• There's an Urban Legend about former US Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall being mistaken for a gardener by a passerby when he was doing yard work outside his home.
• In maybe one of the most unfortunate examples of this trope, Mexican singer and actor Pedro Vargas was confused for a servant by one of the butlers of one of the richest families in Mexico during the 50s, due of the color of his skin (Not to mention that family was spewing racist insults against him in English, thinking he was not be able understand them. Unfortunately for them, Mr. Vargas did understand English but decided not to call them out, not only out of respect for his hosts, but also to give them a surprise later when he told that story on press.)
• Years after his retirement from the game, famous cricketeer W.G. Grace was working in his garden when he heard two boys in the street having a conversation. One of them was telling the other that the legendary W.G. Grace lived on this street. His friend did not believe him. The first boy said "It's true! He lives in that house where the old gardener is sweeping up the leaves!".