I was hoping it would be Madge. I expected he meant Madge. Then Madge and Hank decided to skip going to the Elders and just cut directly to the portal. "Curse you," I thought forcefully at Madge. "If you'd decided to follow the rules and check in, all your problems would have been solved! Curse you, and curse the irony!"
At that point, it was clear to me that the manager in question would not be Madge. I'm still not clear on the baker/peacekeepers setup. I guess it should have been clear that the bakery is its own department, but I still had the nagging feeling that there was some crossover. The peacekeepers have a monthly rotation or something, and bakery managers are peacekeeper officers. Something like that. You've stated otherwise in the story, but it just wasn't sticking. <shrug>
As for the non-recognition, I do like your reasoning. Especially the "you see what you expect to see" thing. Very apt. Even so, I personally would have preferred some slight reaction. A blink and a shake of the head or something. Like when you're walking down the street and you think you see someone you know -- an old friend from college, a celebrity, that one guy from that place back in wherever it was -- and you do a sort of double-take before realize that the person in question is supposed to be a thousand miles away and that the person in front of you is just a lookalike (maybe a distant cousin, or, in this case, maybe a professional impersonator) so you should really stop staring and making wierd faces and just get on with life.
That's what I'd have liked. It might be hard to convey without going into the bakery worker's POV, though. More importantly, you need to write things as you see them. So, take it under consideration, but if you want to keep it the way it is, I won't object.
Paul
