Mistaken for Servant: Difference between revisions

 

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

 

== 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.

 

 

* 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]],'' [[The Ojou|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 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 {{spoiler|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.}}

 

* 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".

== Film ==

* In the [[So Bad It's Good|the Live-Action]] ''[[Mortal Kombat (film)|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.

* 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 (film)|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, [[Parking Payback|he tosses the guy's keys into a hedge]].

* 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:

* 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 Trope|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.

* A variant is referenced in several [[P. G. Wodehouse|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 Ensues|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 [[British Accents|rustic accent]].

* [[G. K. Chesterton]] uses this in at least two of his ''[[Father Brown]]'' detective stories. {{spoiler|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.}}

** 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 [[Incredibly Lame Pun|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 ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|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 ''[[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 ==

* 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 [[Nice to the Waiter|dick to him when he thought he was a valet]] too.

** 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 a ''[[Murphy Brown]]'' episode, Murphy starts dating a [[May-December Romance|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.

 

 

* 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?"

 

 

* Apparently Lord Halifax, Britain's pre-WWII foreign minister, at a meeting with [[Adolf Hitler|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...

** 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.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Servant Tropes]]

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]

[[Category:Mistaken for Index]]