Today I made a quick stop at Home Depot on the way home from work.

I forgot I was wearing an orange shirt.

Good heavens .... I felt like a salmon swimming upstream, as I "fought" my way through throngs of customers who thought I worked there!

Lesson learned

I have trouble with the employees at HD.
There are a few people there who know who I am and they bring customers over for questions they can't answer.
That is a fine line to walk. I don't want to offer any official advice but I will discuss he code issues.

Usually I just avoid the electrical department whenever possible.

If you were in Syracuse, nobody would have noticed. Syracuse University's school colors are orange and a little blue.

Based on the way that I've been mistreated so often at HD, I would have told them "Go away...I'm on break".
LOL

I have an 'orange' rain jacket, and have to wear ID at work, and going into the HD for inspections on a rainy day, basically questions even in the parking lot.

Life goes on.

I have had the same thing happen to me wearing an orange shirt, usually a customer just wanting to know what aisle something is in.

I recently went to an Austrian DIY store wearing dirty blue overalls. Guess how quickly an elderly lady thought I looked so professional and started buggering me with questions!

Obviously she didn't mistake me for an employee (store colours are red and yellow) but she thought I'd be able to help her.

Unfortunately no one could help her - the item she was looking for simply didn't exist. She had one of those triple Schuko sockets that fit a single-gang box but protrude quite far from the wall, similar to the 6-way adaptors for duplex NEMA sockets and wanted to have it replaced by something with a lower profile. I told her she'd have to get an electrician to add two more boxes if she wanted a regular triple socket there and tried to steer her away from the very cheapest no-name range of switches.

I shudder to think who might have promised to do the work for her!

In the UK, track-side railway workers wear full orange fluorescent clothing and as I volunteer on a weekend tourist railway I have a set of orange gear with appropriate hard hat in the car. My day job involves a 50 mile commute into London by train and as my HiViz jacket is also waterproof, when it rains – as it often does here in the UK – I sometimes wear it going to work. This can have interesting consequences at the railway station where I am often asked for directions and details of the next service to wherever. I am reminded of one of those Tom and Jerry episodes where the devil is sitting on one of his shoulders and an angel on the other!

Another side effect of HiViz clothing is that it makes one utterly invisible! At my daughter’s university I had to park my car while she picked up some stuff and there is a strictly no car stopping policy. Simple solution – quickly don orange HiViz and associated hard hat. Me and the car quickly disappeared from the radar screen as we are most obviously on official business!

Yup a hard hat and a clipboard pretty much gets you anywhere, vest is just a plus.

Add a marked municipal vehicle to the above....

That will make them scurry

I am amazed when my wife tells me how scared a lot of people are with inspectors. They have wanted her to "walk" the inspector since she was early in the building business.
Her attitude is just "OK what can we do to get this right" and things just cruise right along. One day she did meet an inspector she knew holding a puppy. He said that was not fair.

Crikey!,
I wasn't even wearing Hi-Vis the last time something like this occurred......
Back in the day, myself and a fellow fire-fighter were at the local DIY "Mega-store" (as they call it here) for a charity sausage sizzle and a PR event about fire safety.
We were wearing what we call our "undress uniform" (formal gear), an elderly lady ran up to me and said "Officer, can you please arrest this young man here, he tried to steal my hand-bag!!"
She had the kid by the ear and I said that I probably could if I was in fact a police officer, but no I'm just a Fire officer.
I did call the police via our fire appliance and the kid got a good telling off and a clip around the ear from one of the local policemen.
About two years later the Fire Service here changed the colour of our shirts from light blue to dark blue, mainly because of the confusion from the public, some FF's were being targeted as police officers.

Trumpy:

"some FF's were being targeted as police officers."

How do you mean "targeted"??

Transit driver's here in Winnipeg had their uniforms changed a number of years ago because they resembled the Winnipeg Police ones.

Apparently the Police Union complained that their members were sick and tired of being asked when the next bus was coming, or how to get from here to point B when they were doing foot patrols downtown.

There were less bus drivers than police officers so they got the new uniforms.

One thing I will add about high vis clothing it seems to be be cut roomier. I have been out shoveling snow in some of my different high vis clothing and I fell not as tight as if I do it in my dress parka.

I also figure if I fall down in the snow the high vis will make it easier for somebody to find me.

Not sure if you meant "targeted" in a negative way or simply "mistaken". Nonetheless, the company uniform I wear is dark blue, long sleeve, heavy Arc Flash rated material. Plus I carry gear on my pants belt including a 2-way radio. While standing in line at a Tim Horton's a little kid walked over, poked me in the leg and said, "bad man".
Pretty sure, based on the appearance of the mom, he came from an environment that sees a lot of police officers in his living room. I knelt down and told him, "Hey, I'm a good guy especially when the lights go out".
Kids say the darn...

Has anyone else noticed the shift in homeless fashion?

Years ago, you could always spot the recently released convict by his plain olive-drab jacket.

Then we had a period when all sorts of marginal sorts were attired in woodland camo fatigues.

These days, I see more such folks drifting about in bits of high-viz clothing .... often including bits of company uniforms.

At a local thrift store, company uniforms appear in the donation bin within days of being issued.

I'm reminded of my first industrial job. At a meatpacker in the market district, I noted all sorts of folks walking the street in butcher coats and hard hats - folks who worked at no establishment, but were constantly trying to slip into places to commit their mischief.

They could also be working off and on for some of the day labor companies to be in high vis.

You see the people standing outside of the companies that provide day labour to the private companies in my city standing in line with all sorts of high vis clothing.

From the brand new styles to vests/ jackets that were probably visible 20 years ago but are now next to black.