a semi-regular

Film There's a version of the Kevin Williamson problem in service industries. If you serve hundreds of people a day, you don't remember every single one, unless there's been something unusual about the interaction -- either they've shouted at you, been especially nice (to look at), or had an issue which needed some time to resolve.

But if the customer is a semi-regular, they see you fairly often and know where you work, they recognise you and think it's especially rude when you don't recognise them if you see them in the street/at the cinema/waiting for the bus. Really, we don't mean it, it's just our heads are full of other stuff, like remembering to breath or walk forward without tripping over all of the time.

Of course, the flip side of having met hundreds of people per day is that I've been at a parties (it does happen), seen a familiar face and spent hours trying to work out where we met. I've even talked to someone about it, and we each listed our respective careers and friends and it wasn't until I was on the way home that I realised they'd received [insert service here] from me, whilst being annoyed because I wasn't doing it quickly enough.