Men keep ignoring me in my own bloody shop

[Kitee]

I own a small local shop that sells office supplies/ printing equipment etc amongst other things.

I have been noticing lately that men COMPLETELY blank me in favour of my male colleague whom I have recently employed - let’s call him Joe (until then it was just me so they had no other option)

For example, yesterday a woman came in with her husband. I greeted them and asked if I could help with anything. He started to reply to me and then when he noticed Joe he just turned his back on me and continued what he was saying to Joe. I was so angry! It’s my shop!

Second example, a man came in with a list of items he needed which included product codes etc. Once again I greeted him warmly and he walked straight past me, did not even acknowledge me, to make a beeline for Joe.

I’m seriously getting fed up of this.

I know not ALL MEN do this.

I don’t know if they even realise they are doing it?

It’s pretty disheartening to be honest, I feel like I’m not taken as seriously and it’s presumed that I just don’t know what I’m talking about.

Anyone else experienced this or have any way of dealing with it?

AIBU to wear a big sign round my neck staying that I am more than capable of serving you in my own shop?

'lady doctor' drives me bonkers they never mention the 'gentleman doctor' they saw last time

I'm in a female dominated field now, but certainly get annoyed by businesses deferring to DP.
When we were getting our house valued prior to sale, the EAs who wrote to DP (not even both of us) did not get used and I told them why when they rang to follow up. I organised all appointments, paperwork etc, not him.

This thread is dispiriting

older people like my parents will refer to having seen "a very nice lady doctor" which they consider fine provide she is pretty and smiley too

So we're all agreed that sexism is unacceptable, but blatant ageism is ok? As so often on MN, depressingly.

50ShadesofEarlyGrey and other PPs, re sexism in car showrooms, have you seen this very funny prank? (famous female racing driver posing as sales assistant in Malaysia). Keep watching till the end!

About 15 years ago I played the bagpipes and many local pubs asked for Pipers for midnight. My pipe major gave one to me and after I'd spoken to the pub owner they rang my pipe major and requested a "proper piper" ie one who was male!

Luckily for me my pipe major cancelled the pubs booking, found me another job and also spoke to other Pipers in our area and the first pub was blacklisted. No piper would play for them for new year, burns night or anything else.

Yes ringle I think you're right - I tend not to get it so much with patients/relatives below middle age. Sometimes when a family is together you overhear a hissed "DAD, she IS the doctor!" from a son/daughter as you're walking them in.

However something that is still common is the assumption that if you're with a group e.g. on a ward round, that the male is always the most senior doctor. I've noticed this as I've become more senior in my career.

Sadly I spoke about this with a female supervisor a few years ago. Her answer was that women in their thirties looked much younger these days because of the way they groomed/presented themselves and if I wanted to be taken more seriously I shouldn't "bother with all that moisturiser and fancy smoothing hair products"
I commented that it was perhaps also because I didn't smoke thirty fags a day....

OP, PP above are right about trying to help with some solutions. Put Joe to work and think about expanding your business! Do you advertise locally? Could adverts have your name/face on and give yourself a fancy new title, e.g. managing director?

Really depressing thread.

Not work per se, but once I went to one of our offices in northern England with male colleague. We went to where we were staying first and was lost. I saw a middle aged man doing some gardening in a front garden and asked him for directions to our hotel- without looking at me he gave directions to my male colleague.

I took my coat to a dry cleaners to have the sleeves altered. My DH was with me. When I asked how much it cost, the assistant directed the response to a completely disinterested DH. Weird.

We had a male temp in an admin role where I worked. Our Chief Exec did a sweep of the office at Xmas, merry christmassing etc. Totally ignored me, but was all over the male temp. How long have you worked here, what do you do? I should have interrupted and said me? I chop liver.

Worth highlighting that if I walked into a shop and saw one person with a "manager" badge and one person with a "sales assistant" badge, I'd talk to the sales assistant. I'd assume that serving me would not be the manager's job!

In my last job I worked in a team of six people doing identical (senior) roles, I was the only female. I had to work really hard to make sure I wasn’t invisible. I was left out of meetings, asked to make coffee, asked to speak to Bloke A (despite answering questions competently) and was referred to as the Girl Job Title (I was in my late 20s).

The worst of it was when I came back from maternity leave after having DD. One of the men in the same role as me had left and was replaced by another man. When I came back I assumed that New Man had been told about me and my imminent return, seeing as we did the same role and worked in the same office. When I came back I went over to my colleagues desks, introduced myself to New Man and said to them all if they needed my input with anything I have some free time having just come back from maternity leave.

New Man brings a load of paperwork over, tells me he’s doing a mailout of letters for a project, and could I print 300 out and send to these addressees please. I was - this was something we’d usually get an apprentice to do. When I asked ‘why would I do that’ he said “because you’re admin”. I explained that actually I do the same job as him. Turns out he assumed that no one in our job would be likely to have a baby and be off for a year, with it being a ‘career’ role the fact that I’d actually stated I’m also a Job Title meant nothing

The annoying thing was that, for the next few weeks, he still tried to get me to do menial tasks for him. Photocopying etc. I’d been in the business far longer than he had and the gall was something to behold. It’s like he was deaf or just didn’t believe me. In the end I told him to cut it out, I won’t be doing any jobs for him so stop asking. He seemed genuinely surprised that it annoyed me. I ended up putting a formal complaint in about him.

This thread reminds me of the “Invisible Woman” sketches on the Fast Show if anyone remembers them?

It's bloody infuriating. I went to buy a new car and took my dad, as he loves a day out under strict instruction that I made all the decisions and I did all the talking. First dealership, the salesman directed all the answers to my questions at my dad as he tried to wander off. I asked the salesman about isofix fittings, he replied "just get a man from Halfords to do it love, it's a bit hard." I asked him outright if he actually wanted to sell me this car. He looked very confused, so I assumed not and left. I went to a Honda dealership next who were fantastic. Salesman spoke to me only, showed me all the features, didn't flinch when i got technical. The only time he spoke to my dad was when I went off to pay and he and my dad went to bond over the motorbikes.

One that reduced me to hysterics was when I was working overseas. I went out to dinner with a male colleague, who was ethnically of the area where we were, but British and didn't speak the local language. I was very obviously foreign looking but spoke the language fluently. The waiters could not handle it. They kept speaking to him, as he looked local, I would explain that he didn't speak the language but I did, and I would order. They glazed over, asked him for the order, he's looking terrified, I keep repeating that he can't speak the language, I can, and I order in their language. They double check the order with him, with their back to me, I'm practically shouting that yes, that's what we'd like.

They came back to order the next course and we'd decided that my friend should just copy whatever sounds I make in order to freak them out less. So I say the order slowly and clearly, he mangles it but gets a few words out in their language. They congratulate him manically for speaking just a few words while i'm just head down on the table screeching "Am I fucking invisible?" Both of us can't speak for crying with laughter. Poor, poor daft waiters..

What if Joe has charisma? Is better dressed? Better looking? It could well be down to his sex, but could be nothing to do with it.

It doesn't take a penis to make an exceptional salesperson.

In my pubs and restaurants I go to, the bill gets given to the person that asks for it. That’s something that’s easily trained.
Same with wine. You give it to the person who ordered it to taste. Anywhere decent will do those two things now.if they don’t, mention something as the industry has changed slightly.

Salesmen get very uncomfortable when I don't simply want to buy the laptop that comes in pink.

I was getting a new handset, and had been talking about operating system and memory and similar exciting things. Sales assistant went to get a handset that I had decided on. Came back and said, "we've only got it in black, will that be okay for you? A lot of women find it too manly."

When I said, "er, no, that's fine," (being a bit surprised that I'd have any option other than black or grey without forking out a lot extra,) she responded, "no, you techy types don't worry about things like that." (We had discussed my job in IT, so she knew what I did.

I did consider writing to their customer services along the lines of, "it's no wonder there's a problem with women in tech, if your staff have attitudes like this," but location and so on means they are on my list of possible future employers. Bit lower down the list than they were, mind.

Also had this in my own house. Had a guy round to change locks on a door while living abroad. I spoke to the guy in the local language about what needed done and he began. My flat mate who had been the one who lost the key and who didn't speak the language returned, and immediately the key guy started speaking to him instead! My flat mate just stared at him in obvious confusion and even when I pointed out that he couldn't speak the language, the key guy kept ignoring me to speak to my flat mate! What a tosser!

I worked in an engineering company, with budgets. We had to convert an estimate into a budget in a hurry and for one package I found about $32m to allocate. Several months later 2 of my male colleagues got together and reviewed the budget for the package. I got an email from one of them to say that I'd screwed it up because I'm not a technical person, and the budget should be $33M. Berating me for $1m which was well within our +- 10% tolerance, and acceptable, but they made out I'd committed some heinous crime and was an idiot.

His son worked with me (as a jnr) and we used to laugh about it, every time we worked on a task, don't forget, I'm not a "technical person".

I tend not to have any problems in the farming side of my life, thankfully, but the property renovation side is a different story. Worst one so far was the surveyor who came to measure up for double-glazing on a project. The salesman had been absolutely fine, but this guy decided he wasn't going to listen to anything I was trying to tell him (such as how the various windows were going to be finished) and said, 'I'll just go and ask this chap here if he knows what's going on,' and proceeded to ignore me completely.

I left him with my very bewildered freelance carpenter and the company was not chuffed when they had to send the fitters back three times to correct the inevitable mistakes They did send the surveyor back as well, to estimate how much to take off the bill for the work I gave up on and got the carpenter to do instead. He tried to claim that he thought I was only the keyholder for the property, not the owner - funny how all the trades on site were asking me questions about how I wanted X, Y and Z done while I was down there...

I work in IT consulting and I simply don't have enough time to tell you every "I'm not here to make your coffee, I'm sure the receptionist can tell you where the machine is" story. Ugh.

It's very telling that 20 or 30 years ago we thought "oh no, it won't be like that in 20 years" but it still is.

north that’s ridiculous!

I've just had it with some new students who thought I was telling them 'the wrong information' just because it was different from what a male colleague had told them.... We're the same grade.... grrr!

I had a plumber out to fix my dishwasher, and it still wasn't working after he'd supposedly fixed it. I phoned him and he said "It's fixed, I've just forgotten to reconnect it to the water supply. Put your husband on the line and I can tell him how to reconnect it."

I crossly told him that my DP wasn't home, and that I'm far more intelligent than he is anyway so he'd better tell me how to do it instead

Insultingly, it was literally the easiest task ever to reconnect it. He must have thought me pretty thick not not be able to do it myself...

I’ve just remembered when I took up home brewing as a hobby while I was living with my ex. I posted pictures on Facebook of some of my experiments and creations. Ex had nothing to do with it except for drinking the results.

A family member who’d seen my posts on Facebook was asking me for ideas for Christmas presents and asked if perhaps ex would like some brewing supplies for ‘his new hobby’

Violet a lot of these things are penis operated