Where I grew up as a kid you were always warned about yellowjackets, not wasps generally. Not knowing how to discern a yellowjacket I guess I was generally wary of wasps, particularly any wasp that was yellowish, but never had the mindset that all wasps were aggressive. A wasp-shaped thing that was black wouldn't have been something I'd think twice about.
What sucks about yellowjackets is that they're easy to dismiss as bees. You can ignore bees; indeed, you should ignore them. Not ignoring bees is how you get stung. Yellowjackets have a reputation for being capricious. Ignoring a yellowjacket is how you get stung, not how you avoid getting stung. At least, that seemed to be the wisdom.
I really don't understand how to mistake a bee for a yellowjacket - they look very different, and about the only thing they have in common are that they fly and some bees have a yellowish color that does not look like the bright yellow.
They sound different, they are build quite different, and they fly differently. Just observing bees on flowers for a few minutes every day in the summer and it's obvious, at least it is to me.
What sucks about yellowjackets is that they're easy to dismiss as bees. You can ignore bees; indeed, you should ignore them. Not ignoring bees is how you get stung. Yellowjackets have a reputation for being capricious. Ignoring a yellowjacket is how you get stung, not how you avoid getting stung. At least, that seemed to be the wisdom.