Everyday sexism

In my role about 2/3 of employees are male. But on the engineering and other maintenance and "major projects" side, it's about 80-90% male.

A typical convo with a contractor might go thus:
Can I speak to the supervisor please?
That's me.
Oh, no, I mean a manager. The guy running this place.
Still me.
looks confused and surprised Oh! Ok! Er, I need to sign in to do some work...

Another typical situation is a male contractor explaining in deep detail what work he needs to do on site to a male member of my staff only for my colleague to say, Oh, you need to speak to my supervisor...then I get the mansplained version of what he said to my junior .

Our customers are no better. Some male customers will ask me for assistance and I will look it up on my iPad if I don't know, find what they are looking for, show them on the iPad, then maybe give them a map with their destination circled so they know where they are going....they say thank you, you've been a great help...then literally a minute later they are asking a male colleague the exact same thing .

I am so used to it now, I gave to laugh.

I get this in reverse. I'll call up a garage and ask for some specific work to be done, and get called "sir".
Or I'll get called at work, and if the person calling doesn't know me, I'll either get a male reference or they'll mishear my name and bestow a male name on me.
I don't have a particularly low voice at all but I don't tend to use many of the hedging techniques other women do.
It's a real eye opener.

No probs at the Skoda garage that we used to use, but then it was family run by a couple and their two daughters. The two daughters took no shit from male customers.

I went into a car showroom with my 21 year old daughter, I was 38...we're both petite blonde women.
You could see the dumb fuck having a meltdown.
He kept speaking to me, I asked him why he wasn't speaking to the woman buying the car... Did not compute and they lost a sale. Twat!!!

There's a brilliant chapter, wittily written as a playlet, in Joan Smith's Misogynies, which perfectly illustrates this when a workman calls. Awful and funny. Excellent book, hasn't really dated unfortunately. Woman's Hour prog about it here:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b045c0hc

I went to the rescue of a colleague to jump start his car.
He panicked when I earthed the circuit to his car's body, causing another man to come over and "inform" me that the lead goes to the second battery terminal (except it bloody doesn't).
Politely explained I was fine, DF is a time-served mechanic and jump starts are a doddle.

Didn't stop him sitting in his car (next to colleague's) watching to make sure the little woman didn't blow up both cars 🙄. Prat even gave me the thumbs up as he drove off.

Then he tried to mansplain to me what investment is. 'I teach investment law you wanker' was my reply. God that felt good.

minou123 we had similar with a double glazing salesman, although he didn't say he needed the husband present, he said he needed both partners present, because usually both partners have to consult each other to make a decision so it's better if both are there.
However, he was an arrogant sales wanker anyway, so we went with someone else.

Oh, I have another.
(I live alone, not married)

So, I decided to redo my bathroom. I called and booked an appointment with local bathroom fitters to come round and given me ideas on what I want. All is good.

2 days before the appointment, I get a call from the Male salesman and I shit you not, this is the conversation:

Him: Hi, just calling to confirm our appointment. I just also wanted to ask if you could ask your husband to be there aswell, please.
Me: why would my husband need to be there?
Him: well, we have found that when women make decisions in the appointment, the husband comes home and he wants to change things. It causes problems to come out again and change everything. So it's easier if you are both there.
Me: I dont have husband. Whose husband would you like me to have with me?
Him: oh, that's ok then. No problem
Me: yep, there is a problem. I'll cancel the appointment thanks.

I was furious. The assumptions they made were batshit crazy.

• I own my own home, without the assistance of a man. Crazy!
• because they have experianced cases of husbands 'coming home' and wanting to change the design, they have now decided that ALL women can't make decisions without the husband there. Crazy!

I always let my partner do the car shopping. Mostly because he is happy to spend hours online finding the perfect 3 year old ex-mobility car with 6,000 miles on the clock in whatever obscure corner of the country and match it to the relevant local dealership that can have it shipped to us for perusal.

While I hate shopping with a fairly unreasonable passion.

I bought a new car recently. First car I bought myself and I did take DP with me. He did ask a lot of things that I wouldn't have thought to ask given that he had bought a car before and I was ok with this. Anyways a week after I got the car I got in touch with the garage to let them know that it was making a strange noise which worsened when the headlights were turned on. I let them know I suspected it was a grounding fault and something needed rewired (This I got from the guys at work. We work in an engineering firm with lots of electricians, etc. Again they knew from experience not cos they were male)
So car goes to the garage. "We can't find the cause. Still looking" Went on for a bit. They sent it back and said there was no fault. I recorded a video and sent it so they picked it up again. Same thing. Can't find the cause.
Eventually they phoned head office who told them it was a known issue with cars converted to right hand drive for UK sale. A bit of extra wiring needed otherwise there are grounding issues.
Seriously? Nearly a month of back and forth and it was the issue I told them it was on Day 1!!!

@MaximusHeadroom If it's in Italy you could tweet it to @occhioallospot

The job centre round the corner from me has these Pop Art pictures in the window. The women are

1. Sexy secretary, complete with the arm of the glasses on the tongue like the opening scene of a porno
2. A maid wearing the full black and white with tiny skirt and little white headdress.

The men are a Welder a butcher and an Engineer

I really want to post pictures but it would be so outing.

I'm not in the UK but am in Europe

I had cold call about investment opportunities. I told him I was not interested. Then he tried to mansplain to me what investment is. 'I teach investment law you wanker' was my reply. God that felt good.

Must have been lucky.
Bought many cars with DH and they've never ignored me to address him.

Never happened to me either.

Yes, but..., you have woman-eyes. These can't see anything more than the pretty colour of the new brum-brum and how the ickle light comes on inside for you to check your lippy-wippy. The only time you might be interested in the clever technical man-stuff is to see if the family shopping will fit in the boot.

Now run along.

I bought a van a few years back. I took my OH with me and the sales guy started directing responses to my questions to my OH and he said 'I don't know why you are talking to me, I'm not buying anything'. So he directed his remaining responses at me.

I picked up a few issues I needed dealing with if I was to buy the van, and I heard him later in the office saying 'we need to do this and this, she's spotted X and Y, no idea how'.

With my eyes you twat. My eyes.

I’m disappointed to hear of your sexist salesman at Jaguar, OP.
I don’t get any of that shit from my Ford dealer. I’ve been widowed for 28 years, and have bought a new car by myself every 3 or 4 years in that time.
My dealer never once tried to patronise me, and always got me a really good discount on the new models. He discussed top speeds, petrol consumption and brake horsepower, never colour schemes or vanity mirrors, and was just as polite and deferential as I’d expect him to be to a male customer.
I told him once, many years ago, that the reason I always came back, apart from the sheer reliability of the cars, was his lack of sexism. He was genuinely surprised and said it would never occur to him to behave like that. He recently retired, but the new chap is just the same.

Lol at admiral ad...This is a stories men tell thing isn't it. Which are the opposite of the truth.

Admiral Head of Marketing, Alex Murphy.
Looks young enough not to be a sexist dinosaur, but what do I know.

twitter.com/webuccaneer

DH does 90% of the boring life admin and then gets all excited when we get good deals.

Anyway my everyday sexism is why are little girl clothes so flimsy? All DSs clothes are practical but the same thing in the girl version always looks a bit rubbish to play in like flimsy sandels or really short shorts that don't protect legs as much.

Lol at admiral ad

Who usually does all the boring as fuck and time consuming paperwork and 'life admin' in families? Thread after thread after thread asking this question reveals yes of course it's the woman!

This is a stories men tell thing isn't it. Which are the opposite of the truth.

I saw an advert on TV for a custom PC builder.

3 types of user (I think): The maths/science geek, the gamer and one other stereotype.

All men of course. Maybe if they did a pink version for us ladies?