I'm awful with faces. To me, a new person's face has no features. I discussed this with my best mate, and he suffers similar. We reckon it may be all those years of visiting customers' homes.
Opposite problem here. I can always remember a face. It's remembering the name that goes with it and where the break I saw it before that gets embarrassing.
May years ago, when working for (what was then) British Telecom, I went into a customer's house, had chatted too her about the phone problem, had gone upstairs into the master bedroom and was taking the socket apart when she said "<my name>", which sent a chill down my spine, how did she know my name, "you don't remember me?". This last bit sent a bigger chiver down my spine, as I then reconised the voice... ...my primary school 2nd year (year 5 in modern language) teacher, who, how can I put it, lets just say at school I wasn't the best pupil in the class.
I had held a 2 or 3 minute conversation in the hallway with her, eye to eye contact, and not reconised her until she said