As a bit of history, for those who may not know...

For the last several years, I've been doing my grocery shopping, banking and general errand running as the real me. IE. Presenting as my feminine self. In keeping with that, I've developed customer/cashier relationships with a number of workers in our local stores. Only in Safeway, is anyone aware that I don't always dress en femme because I often stop on the way home from work to pick up some little item that some how escaped being included on my weekly shopping list. To their credit, I'm treated in the same friendly manor, no matter how I'm dressed.

At Bi-mart, I've always dress to please myself for years. I've never really had the need to stop by there without taking time to dress appropriately. The things we really want to get there is the feed for the critters around our house. (Birds, squirrels and even a nocturnal skunk my wife calls "Flower.") This includes 20# bags of bird seed, suet, unsalted peanuts and 10# bags of sunflower seeds. For a time, they didn't stock the 10# bags and I had to buy it in 20# bags. However, I did keep asking if they would ever get it in the 10# bag.

Well one day, I came in and one of the clerks who was out working the floor, spotted me and made a special point of coming over to tell me that they again had sunflower seeds in the 10# bag. "When they came in, I thought of you," she said. We had a nice chat about just what critters populated my back yard.

After that, when she saw me in the store, she would always make it a point to come over and say hi and we'd have a little chat about various things. I remember thinking how nice it was for her to treat me as the woman I felt like and was presenting as. I know that testosterone has played havoc my body and facial structure so that passing is always iffy so I assumed she was just being nice to an old trannie. But a little over two months ago, when I'd been there on my weekly trip, they were out of unsalted peanuts. My wife insisted that I go on Tuesday (the day they get their shipments) and be first in line to get the peanuts and that I stop by after work rather than come home and change.

Well, my favorite Bi-mart worker spotted my now familiar face and came over to say hi, only as she did, she read me as male... 100% male and interrupted her greeting with an, "Oh!" and turned away. At that point I thought she suddenly realized that I'd been coming in in dresses and skirts, she had assumed I was a woman and didn't like realizing I was male. To top it off, she was conspicuously absent on my weekly trips to the store. I wondered if she'd requested new hours or even a reassignment to another Bi-mart in order to not have to see me. All the while all the other checkers seemed to be unaffected so in consolation, I assumed she'd done what ever without telling anyone else of her discovery. Paranoid thought, I know.

On my latest trip to Bi-mart, I was checking out when she (my favorite Bi-mart worker) made it a point to come over and say "Hi. I haven't seen you in a while." I smiled and we had a short exchange and she went on her way. So either she's forgotten that I was there in drab or decided that it doesn't matter. Either way, I'm good with it and I get to have that woman to woman relationship with her that I enjoyed before.