Not good with people, I had developed a facade full of weird coping mechanisms as I attempted to fake not being tremendously shy and avoidant of rejection. I was just into my twenties, working at a dating service as a kind of factotum (data entry, but also shooting and editing videos, networking, and reception). Inadvertently, the relevant details of all of our members just ... grafted themselves onto my hapless brain. Names, height, weight, job, member number, video number, and so forth. Employees began to call me rather than look people up in the directory, but I liked to greet people when they came in rather than having them fumble for their card. One conversation went like this:

Me: Hello, $Firstname! No need for the card, I know your number is seventeen forty-two. It's been about six months since you've been in, let me get into the computer and get your activity printed.

Him: You know me?

Me: Just by your picture. [idle chatter mode initiated as I wait for the printer]. Say, you've lost about ten pounds. That's down to one-sixty, right? I'll make a note to update your profile.

Him: [shifting uncomfortably] I was really one-eighty but I fudged it, so now it is accurate.

Me: So, how's the insurance business?

Him: You remember that?

Me: [continuing on like a chipper but oblivious robot] Our members are important!

Him: I'll buy you a steak dinner if you can tell me my birthday.

Me: July thirty-first, nineteen forty-four.

I let him off the steak dinner thing.

I am not good with people and it took me a long time to learn that, although people like to be recognized and known to some degree, huge amounts of detail retained over long periods, or remembering even singular encounters with high fidelity freaks some folks out. Somewhere along the line, I had mechanically applied the "remember people's names" advice from books like How to Win Friends and Influence People and must have figured if some is good, more is better, then used the few strengths I had, but instead ended up setting off people's "information asymmetry" threat detection and/or Who Is This Freak.

Now I clamp down and try not to blurt out recognizing someone from decades back, even though I am, like a puppy, happy to see a person from long ago once more. When I make jokes that I am like a golden retriever, I am kidding on the square.