Fosgate wrote:
The range bag might hint more at a Hannibal Lecter-ish character.
I got my name and title (formulation chemist) embroidered in fancy lettering on a white coat once and it was all downhill (up?) after that.
Rolled up in my "Ferrari" one day, actually just a throaty-sounding Fiero, wearing my lab coat and carrying a nice leather handbag. A friend of my wife was visiting. Must have been a rough day because all I did was nod politely, throw my coat on the couch, and retreat to the bedroom. I heard later how impressed our visitor was with the hard working "doctor".
It's got me out of a couple of tickets too. It's tough saying just enough but not too much, if you know what I mean.
Digressing...now I'm just so incredibly nice and respectful, I literally put the officers in a trance. Had one pull me over last week, he stopped, and I kept going. I honestly couldn't figure if he was after me or someone else, so I pulled into a side lot. I didn't leave enough room for him to get in behind me without his ass being in the road. That pissed him off even more. He was hot. I basically admitted that I made two terrible mistakes and that this would serve as a lesson no matter what I had coming to me. He immediately became a nice guy and let me go.
I was meeting with some regulators in Texas a while back. I think it was Houston, but cannot swear to it. Anyway I was standing in line at a restaurant when a woman approached me and asked if I was a doctor. She thought I had the attitude of a doctor and combined with a cell phone and a pager, I must be a doctor ... right? One of the people I was going to eat with arrived about that time and later told me he thought I was going to leave him to eat by himself and have dinner with the woman followed by playing doctor later on.
I had completely missed seeing that "opportunity", but then again I have been married for longer than I would have been in jail if I had killed someone or even a couple of someones and do not think that way. That incident was mentioned a few times in the years since too.
The best case of mistaken identity happened several years ago during a snow storm here. I had some samples to be delivered on a Sat. and the client had sent them to the lab instead of my house my mistake. I did not find out until later in the morning after there had been an attempt to deliver them. I drove out to the Fed-Ex facility and asked where the specific driver was. He was a regular and I knew him by name. They got all excited and called him back to the facility to deliver the package to me instead of telling me where he was so I could meet him on his route. He later told me what had happened behind the scenes. I had put on a cap when I left the house ... a baseball cap I had been given as a souvenir by an Assistant US Attorney after an extended meeting in DC on some enforcement litigation where I was an expert witness. We had not been able to meet in the EPA building because they were doing some work on the plumbing and the DOJ had no openings in their building so it was held in the FBI offices. So, the cap I was given and was wearing was an official FBI cap. I really wanted some of their body armor, but that was way out of the question.

The Fed-Ex employees thought I was an FBI agent after something on the truck and they reacted accordingly. I had to retire that cap after that incident, which was a shame because it was a great cap, but I did not want to get into any trouble by accident with it.