Hello, Can anybody hear me?!!

[Nutjob]

As some of you may know, I am in the process of moving house, and as I am a SAHM I have been dealing with the Estate Agents, Solicitors, Mortgage Company etc., on a daily basis. They have hardly spoken to dh at all. So, WHY has every letter, email and phonecall received from all of these been address to HIM!!!! It's like I don't exist, or if I do it is as some kind of secretary for him. It's driving me up the wall. AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHH.

Phew, sorry about that, but I feel much better for letting of a bit of steam!!

Nutjob - I know exactly how you feel. Here in Andalucia the problem is often worse (they did invent the term "macho" after all). Since DP looks Spanish and is male, all officials talk to him, even though my Spanish is decidedly better - I often find myself being an invisible translator.

Sympathy anyway.

Oh Nutjob> I'm afraid it is endemic, and many, many women are still in cahoots. I don't understand!

I'll swap you Nutjob, I'm doing a lot to do with the move as hubby is working away from home, but we had a deal that I don't deal with solicitors - they can phone his mobile and deal with him. Have they ever managed to without phoning our home number first?! Never! I keep having to cut them off and say "actually, I don't know, my husband is dealing with this, please contact him via his mobile when you need to talk to him". Drives me up the wall!

Nutjob, reminds of the time dh and I walked into a restaurant for a meal & the manager said "Good morning sir, table for two?" (Didn't even look at me). He then came over to our table a few minutes later and said "Are you ready to order sir?" The entire time he only addressed dh, then when we left he said "Goodbye sir". The guy was either a major chauvenist or I was invisible that morning, one or the other - I was so furious. Seems a lot of men still regard women as unworthy of any sort of attention.... GGRRRRRRR.

Sorry ... I can't hear you ... is there a man I can talk to?

And male waiters always assume if a beer is ordered it's for the man, even if they have heard it come from your own lips. I know this is petty, but it really winds me up.

is like that when someone wants to come to the house to sell you something and they insist on your husband being there

I remember this when we were moving - the mortgage was actually calclated from MY earnings (he was doing temp work at the time) yet his name was on it first and all the correspondance comes to him! You'd have thought these people would realise who deals with all these things.

Bobbins - Your post has just reminded me of when me and dh and my brother and his girlfriend went out for a curry one night. Dh, my brother and I all asked for Tiger Beer, when it came up dh and my brother had a proper beer glass, but they gave me some dainty little thing that I had to keep filling up all the time. Perhaps I didn't look strong enough to lift a pint glass!!

When we moved into this house 3 years ago, I called BT to get the phone connected. The bill is in DPs name and they insisted that they speak to him. Now when the bill comes in (addressed to him) he leaves it for me to open and sort out payment.

Oh no!!! I think this might all be my fault! Whenever I get those annoying people knocking on the door to ask about electricity or gas providers and supposedly offer you a better deal, I always tell them that I don't know anything about our bills as my dh deals with it and he's not home.... I have to stop doing that, haven't I.
In my defence though, if dd is home, she likes to stand behind me when I'm at the door and bark madly at whoever I am speaking too, so I couldn't really have a conversation anyway, could I?

Mocha, a woman I used to work with had loads of trouble with BT because they mistakenly put her down as Mr XXX. They refused to do anything about it as they needed to talk to Mr XXX and couldn't deal with her as she was Miss XXX. I believe it took quite some time to sort that one out!