Ways middle aged men have told us off this week

[Siblingsadness]

I've got 2 today and it's not even midday yet
I swim every day at 6am . There's normally about 6 of us, today I had the pool all to myself. I swam in one of the lanes as i am working on staying straight during certain strokes. After about 20 minutes a man got in the pool. I've seen him before, he always goes in the unlaned bit and does physio walking up and down.
Today he came over to the lane and said I shouldn't be in there as its the fast lane and I wasn't fast. I thought he was joking so I laughed. He then said he wasn't joking and I needed to move. Of course I told him not to be ridiculous, no one else was in here and if someone fast wanted it, I'd move. He called me a silly batch.
Then just now in tescos, I was in the pasta aisle and a man picked up a jar of pasta sauce and said "is this any good" I said I wasn't sure sorry, I normally just get the passata and put onion and garlic in it. He sort of mocked me and said "ooh good cook are you" I said yes, I'm OK and I enjoy it too. He then said "well at least I can parallel park you silly cow"
Now I know I just encountered 2 nutters (maybe a third is on the way) but I'm a bit cheeky and a cow before lunch today despite just going for a swim and buying cheaper pasta ingredients. 🤣🤣

Nobody deserves to be called a silly cow even if they ramble on about cooking. Which OP didn't.
Why are people defending this kind of misogyny?

I find these things oddly upsetting. Just feels like someone going out of your way to make your day worse. Can be aggressive when it’s man too.

My most recent one was actually a woman who got passive aggressive on Sunday about my (old, gentle) dog being allowed in a charity shop where the staff welcome dogs (they have a big stash of dog treats in a jar at the counter). I don’t ever take my dog into shops she is not welcome in. Started picking a fight when she could have just said: “I’m afraid of dogs” or whatever her issue was

More generally, I live in the kind of area where people get angry about the smallest things and will always tell you. Had some snotty, stuck up woman yell at me that I was a “bad mother” when her child had rudely snatched a toy off my son. Utterly bizarre and presumably projection. Later saw her child (aged about six) terrorising other kids from my son’s class (3 or 4) in the playground and she did nothing of course.

Agreed. I've only ever been treated rudely by one man at my gym / pool. I made a complaint to reception staff who went immediately to speak to him. He got a warning and I got an apology. That was ages ago and I can't remember any recent occasions where men of any age have been rude to me.

I'm sorry you encountered unacceptable rudeness today.

Ha ha..like this idea.

I went to meet my DH at a packed stadium one day. I was standing on an exterior staircase landing (not in anybody’s way) scanning the crowd below for him and a ‘man’ came up to me and snarled “you think you’re so fucking beautiful don’t you” (I’m not) and stormed off. Honestly I have loads of these, how come I do and other women are posting on here that they don’t? What is it about me that people (men and women) think they can say whatever they like? I’m pretty tall and used to have red hair, is that it, or am I exuding a weakness?

Yes it is.

Recently - crossing a pedestrian bridge (over railway tracks). I was already on the bridge, almost halfway across, walking to the left. A man older than me (middle aged myself) walked on from the opposite end, and started walking straight toward me. The bridge is wide enough for 3 people to walk abreast and there was nobody else on it.
I didn't move. He walked right up to me, got in my face and called me a bitch.

Working in a shop. Man picks up item. Asks if I can reduce it for him. I said no. I'm not allowed to change our prices. He told me he could get it cheaper elsewhere. I said, "Oh that's good then". He said I was a stuck up cow, and had no idea how to treat customers.

Because it's her thread that no one forced you to read or post on.

A lot of people are inappropriate, moany, loud, mouthpieces if they're disgruntled by a minor inconvenience, not exclusive to men.
Mumsnet is a prime example.

I thought there was a male loneliness epidemic. With comments like that, they're not lonely enough.

I would have told the pasta guy ‘actually I can parallel park now go and fk off back
to your pasta sauce dithering’
and the swimming man ‘mind you’re own business and go and fk off back to your own lane’
I can’t stand petty bullies. Male or female.

Non sequitur.

I have probably eaten more phaal curries than you in the past 5 years. The fact that you haven't eaten them doesn't make it any less probable that I have.

Twitter thinking, skymagentatwo.

Ugh the manspreading is the worst. I now keep my leg fully touching theirs until they move. Record is 20 minutes before he gave up!
Ive gone a bit further. On the train a bloke clearly was either frightened of his thighs touching his balls or wanted two seats for himself and didn't want me sitting there. I just smiled and said ' budge up darling, let me squeeze in' Amazingly he did!

I was swimming once next to the lanes, as they were all full. Just swimming up and down minding my own business. Bloke gets in, waits til I come back close to him and says 'I'm just going to swim up and down here now so you find somewhere else'. I didn't even blink, just turned back round and refused to move out of his way. Stayed an extra 20 mins just to piss him off 😂

A lonely old man wanting social interaction could just have easily said something friendly like "Morning, lovely day, isn't it?" rather than insulting a passing woman.

Does it matter where she lives?
The amount of people comparing their life experiences to the OP's and saying it's never happened to them.
Why are you invalidating someone else's experience? We are all different. You are lucky it's not happened to you.
Perhaps some sympathy with posters who have experienced this misogyny rather than doubting them?
Or are you a male troll?

I’m pretty feisty in lots of areas of life, but like most women I’m so socially trained to be polite/pleasant that unfortunately when things like this happen, I freeze, and the perfect “fuck off” response only comes to me much later on. I bet many of us are like that. Part of the reason some men do this is that they know perfectly well that you’re not likely to give them any pushback (we’re also accustomed to not escalating situations in order to be safe).

I had a bad day once just before Christmas where I had then small DD in the back of my car and I was driving over a level crossing with what appeared to be plenty of exit room, and then a car ahead suddenly stopped dead, trapping me on the level crossing as the barriers began to go down. I managed to get off by driving into the opposite lane but it was a bit terrifying and for a few moments I was actually considering getting out of the car and trying to grab DD out of her seat and run, like one of those videos you see on YouTube.

After that I was so shaken, I pulled into the parking outside the local post office. I went in with DD to post some cards, and when I came out I took her round to put her in her car seat. There were quite a few people standing chatting or waiting outside the post office, so I did not clock that the bloke who owned the van parked next to my car was among them. As I prepared to drive away, he barged past my driver’s door, got in his van, wound down his window, and shouted to me in absolute rage, “I waited for you put your kid in the car and you didn’t even thank me, you fucking rude bitch.”

After the level crossing incident I was already feeling really shaken. If I hadn’t been, I might have had something to say back to this bloke (who I hadn’t even seen), who thought he had done me some huge favour by not barging past me as I spent all of 30 seconds strapping DD into her car seat. The level of entitlement of some middle aged men to what they see as deference / interaction / decorative “support animal” behaviour from women is absolutely astonishing.

That was not a nice day.

I practice scales on the leg of mine that is being squashed against.
Acres of childhood piano lessons mean I can do this without pause for up to two hours.
It has never gone beyond five minutes.

On here I'd say and recently had some guy in a van flick the finger at me as he had parked stupidly on double yellow lines outside a station, he carried on swearing at me, then saw I had my daughter in the car and stopped for a bit. Another man came over that was waiting outside the station to tell him to calm down but I drove off at this stage.

This is where my accent comes in handy - men find it quite intimidating when I return fire in angry Glaswegian.
Hope the rest of your day is wanker free, OP.

Response: "You know something? My husband used to say exactly the same thing until I left him for a younger man."

Perhaps it's because I'm older now but I feel absolutely no need to be polite to, or interact unnecessarily with, men I don't know.

I mean, I'll happily have a conversation with anyone but the second they try offering advice, hitting on me, or just being a dick, I usually just look at them and say, 'Don't be a dick.'

I don't feel the need to explain or justify myself or correct them as some people on here have suggested they do, have done or would do. Their comments are nothing to do with me or my competence and everything to do with them being a dick.

I was driving our shared old car

Daylight
Alone reversed into a parking space with a wall behind the car, no issues

Evening, dark
I reversed into the exact same spot, whilst talking to partner at 5mph
Spare wheel hit the wall & window smashed !
I usually never do reverse parking !

My partner did not moan !

A couple of days later he said,
"I've found a replacement door, we need to collect it"
New door on roof rack
Old door removed
New door fitted
Everyone happy

Not all middle age men are idiots !

He is a keeper

No. I genuinely can’t remember ever experiencing anything like this.

The OP’s second example was worse I think. Whilst it wasn’t necessary for him to point it out, the first man was right (assuming that there were other lanes that she could have used). If she was swimming slowly, she should have been in a slow lane.

Obviously while she was the only person swimming in lanes it didn’t really matter, but if a fast swimmer had turned up they probably wouldn’t have shared her lane - they would have been more likely to use a slow/medium lane so they could have it to themselves. Then as others turned up they wouldn’t have known whether to go into the correct lane for their speed or into a lane where the existing swimmers are swimming at the speed they want to go.

Much easier if everyone uses the right lane in the first place!

Nothing recently for me, and not really many examples, but this one happened last Christmas in the supermarket.

I was just getting some paracetamol from the medicine shelves and was suddenly rammed hard with a trolley that was being pushed by an elderly man. He rammed me and shouted "get out of the way," and didn't seem to know what to do with himself when I equally firmly faced him down, said "NO!" and stayed put. I hadn't been slow, had found what I wanted and was just about to move on anyway but I certainly wasn't going to allow myself to be bullied by him.

I can well believe that this sort of thing happens. Others seem to think that because it hasn't happened to them then it never actually happens.

It wasn't this week but back at the beginning of the summer. I had a low oil light come on in my car so bought some oil and wlater that day, went out to fill it up.

I popped the bonnet up but before I had a chance to take the fller cap off, a man walking past said loudly, 'Good Lord. I bet you don't even know what you are doing under there. You should get your husband to do that.'

I just pretended that I hadn't noticed he was there or heard what he'd said. Wanker.