[otakucode]

The one example with regards to doctors has worked for me in the past. I am sure the doctor didn't get the impression that I was a doctor also (I'm not), but when in my initial meeting with a new doctor the fact that I knew the non-brand names of OTC medications and mentioned only asking for antibiotics after having a fever that wouldn't break for more than 48 hours she basically said "oh you know what you're talking about, if you ever need antibiotics just call me and I will call in a prescription for you." I'm not a medical professional, I'm just technical and value precision and knowledge, and doctors seem to appreciate that. It helps if they can relax and not worry about overwhelming the patient by suddenly dropping chemical names or the real names for disorders, diseases, etc. If you show that you're actually interested in that stuff and not an 'alternative medicine' type that they have to pick and choose their words with like tip-toeing through a minefield, they can relax and do their job.

[Tenoke]

I'm very skeptical that any doctors think you are a doctor because you know Acetaminophen and Tylenol are the same thing (the example from the tweets) in general.

I know doctors and they are typically very used to people 'knowing' random bits from their googling before they came in, and would rarely act like the patient has an actionable expertise even if they do.

In this example I suspect the doctor would've ended up giving you the option to just call in for antibiotics at some point, regardless of your knowledge of the names of OTC medications.

[weinzierl]

> I'm very skeptical that any doctors think you are a doctor because you know Acetaminophen and Tylenol are the same thing (the example from the tweets) in general.

That's what I thought too, but at the same time I don't doubt the rest of what otakucode described. Being well prepared and honestly interested gets you often a long way. More importantly the expert (the doctor in this case) does - in my experience - almost never care if you are a real doctor, your wife is a doctor, you abandoned med school, etc. All they care is that there is an individual that seems to speak their language and that they can at least try to skip the translation layer and explain the problem in their own language - which I think is relief to them.

Being well prepared and honestly interested instead of trying to leave the impression to be the expert is the key here I think. With that being said I wouldn't advise stressing not being an expert in the field either. This only puts up a barrier and puts the real expert under pressure to switch on the translation layer again.

[GuiA]

A common hack in customer service is to make the customer feel like they're getting special treatment, are more knowledgeable than most other customers, and so on :)