I actually don’t have many problems about being stereotyped now.
I used to be homeless for 4 or 5 months from drugs and alcohol. People are funny, when you’re homeless you are invisible, they don’t want to go near you. Most people who are homeless are telling lies anyway. Sometimes they don’t even know it’s a lie, about needing money to buy a ticket or something, because they say it so much they start to believe it.
When I was a server in a restaurant I was also invisible.
Now I am the sommelier at one of the top restaurants in the city, and people are always asking my advice, either telling me that they don’t know anything about wine and don’t want to make a mistake, or they are very knowledgeable and appreciate a lot of specific information about the vineyards.