My partner has this pretty significantly. One interesting byproduct is that for most of her life, she didn’t really understand that other people could just recognize and recall faces. So when a bartender would recall her by name when she had been to a place 3 or 4 times in the last month, she thought they were a creepy stalker and not just someone that automatically recalled her. Because for her it is a deliberate and active process of picking out distinctive traits (glasses, beard, bald, gaunt face, small nose, haircut) to “learn” someone’s face. Or thinking she was just completely anonymous if she went to the same club, on the same nights each week, stood in the same place, and people watched. She was horrified when I told her that everyone that worked there definitely remembered her and probably a bunch of the other regulars too.
Last year I switched to a local mom&pop pharmacy from CVS. It was a really strange experience when the owner greeted me by name after seeing me twice over a month apart. Almost startling and somewhat offputting.
I just kind of forgot that some people are just that good at recognizing others. It's something I can't relate to at all, so it's a concept that just slips away from my mental models. But I suppose that's always how it is when you try to conceptualize how another being experiences the world.
