It never occurred to me that I could make someone angry by completing this exercise. In fact, my only misgivings about it were that I would be wasting their time or embarrassing myself mildly.
This exercise led me to examine why people might get offended at being mistaken for a salesperson. Though any of the three people I approached might have jobs similar to working in the store and clearly do not think they are "above" the store (as they were customers in it), they all exhibited some degree of surprise or annoyance at being mistaken for an employee there. Perhaps when someone is in "customer mode" they are used to feeling in control and a tad superior. My questioning that status thus threw them for a loop. When they are in "worker mode," they might be more amenable to helping someone else out (as I found when I interacted with the salespeople in the shop themselves).
Since most of the shop clerks I observed were women, perhaps putting him in that category felt like an affront to his masculinity. Or perhaps he felt he could be more casual and ruder to me because of our shared gender.
The results of this exercise may have been different had I chosen to go during a busy time at the store, or approached people who were not casually browsing, but were more harried. In that case, I may have gotten a more universally surly response. In addition, it might have been different if it had been at a more intimate shop, or a very high end one. I would imagine that the more exclusive and private the environment, the more offended the customer might have been to be identified as a salesperson.
