GAh stop it!!!

[Sliceanddice]

Ok recently i bought a car (woohoo new to me car!!!)
Now i went to three different lots looking for the right car at the right deal (Pt cruiser less than a three year loan, high interest but i am under 21 and a first time buyer)
and every time acting nice and professional.
I did bring my dad because well my knowledge of cars goes to.... Wheels should have air in them right.... and i want his opinion.
That i s all.
Its going only under MY name.
Its being bought with MY money.
THIS IS MY CAR DAMNIT!!!
but at every single lot when we are talking about what my options are everytime we come to the insurance, they would look from me, directly at my dad and say "She does know she is going to need full coverage right?"
GAH!!! for the love god I AM RIGHT HERE YOU ARE TALKING TO ME!!!!!!!!! I know im young but god its my insurance policy too!!! ive had it for almost 2 years!!!

I would glare and cut in and say "Of course i know i need full coverage, im planning on calling and updating when im sign so i dont have to worry about any account problems. I want to make sure MY insurence is right you know'

must not kill....

[RecoveringKinkoid]

When I was about your age I bought a house trailer. I had an aunt with property and hookups who wanted a neighbor, and it made more sense to me than getting an apartment and renting. I was running around looking at mobile homes with my then-boyfriend in tow. Boyfriend had his own place. Boyfriend had not a lot of money. Boyfriend not involved in any way with buying a trailer, nor did he really even have an opinion on same.

It wasn't even his car we were tooling around in. It was mine.

Guess who the smarmy salesman at this one place insisted on talking to?

And it wasn't even a case of he was an older man. He was my age and looked it.

It gets better. Boyfriend kept saying to the guy "She's buying. I'm just along for the ride. Talk to HER." Saleman kept talking to Boyfriend anyway. I told him the same thing a time or two myself, but he ignored me to tell Boyfriend how well made his wares were. (I was crawling around inspecting plumbing and nail marks and overall workmanship. His trailers were crapola.) He went on about construction, wiring, hurricane resistance, etc.

I finally said, "Listen here. He's not your customer. I am. Talk to anyone but me again about this and the conversation is over. Are we clear?"

He says to me "Sorry, miss." (insert long pause while he tries to think of something to say) "Uh...the drapes and such come with the trailer. Do you like the colors?"

I gave him an icy stare for a moment, then turned around and started walking. Told Boyfriend to get in the car, I didn't really care to stand around getting insulted by a sexist pig.

Needless to say I didn't buy anything from that guy's business.

[Boozy]

My current landlord is a chauvinist. This sad excuse for a man is just incapable of dealing with a woman.

Every time something goes wrong with the apartment, it requires two phone calls to get it fixed. One from me, which is promptly ignored, and one from my husband, at which point things get done.

Now, when I say that I take care of everything in our daily lives, I mean I take care of everything. My husband works upwards of 80 hours a week. I handle every oil change, every phone call, every major purchase, every bill payment. So its an incredible pain in the arse for us to have to play this stupid game with the landlord.

My favourite story: Our furnace broke last fall and when I called the landlord to report it, he asked me "Is it turned on?"

No, fuckwit, a dumb broad like me wouldn't even know where to find the switch.

Now, before you all say, "Oh, he's used to dealing with idiot tenants. There are lots of people, men and women, who would forget something like that"...here's what happened next.

Landlord doesn't show up all afternoon, despite the fact that I'm sitting at home waiting for him. My husband gets home around 8 pm, notices its cold, and asks what's up. I swallow my pride and ask him to call the landlord.

Landlord says, "Well, I wasn't about to drive all the way over there until you came home and had a look at it. She says it's turned on, but you know what women are like."



My husband tore him a new one. It was too late in the day to send a furnace guy out, but they showed up the next morning at 8 am.

[marty]

That happened to my mom when she went to buy a house. The guy was real condesending to her and assumed she knew nothing about buying houses, tried to convince her that everything was in perfect condition. She really liked the house so she really wanted it, douchebag aside, so she wasn't going to let it go just because he was an idiot. I believe at one point he said, "Oh no sweetheart, you don't need to get it inspected, I assure you everything is in working order."

Yeah, my mom isn't someone to call sweetheart. She's petite but she's a hardass and you can see it in her face. She's also extremely intelligent, got an inspection done as she was planning to do all along, and made him fix the broken A/C before she would buy. I believe something was said about, "Don't call me sweetheart, princess," or something like that.

[Sliceanddice]

what made it worst was twice it was women (this happen four times cause at one place the one i bought from i went in twice of course and as we where taking care of the last minute needs this woman walked in looked at me read all the paper work and double checking info about the car so i can call my insurence and give the all the right details, looks at my dad bored out of his mind playing with his cell phone and says to him "She does know she needs fuull coverage right" I almost killed her right there)

[Shangri-laschild]

I hate it when people are like this. I used to drive a small car and one day my best friend (a guy) was driving and we were going down a dark country road. Well he hit a patch of ice. We ended up over the ditch and into the field. It was muddy and just starting to freeze. My car had zero ground clearance so it wasn't going anywhere. We got a ride home and came back the next day to get it towed. Now granted my car was slightly decorated I think, so it was a fairly good chance that it was mine, but the first thing the tow truck driver says is "little lady drove her car into a ditch?" to which my best friend in the world said "no, I did". It didn't help my mood much that the asshole also didn't have change.

To this day, if we ever go anywhere and the salesman doesn't introduce himself to both of us, he gets very unimpressed quickly even when it's something he's buying.

[digilight]

Dayum, I just don't understand that kind of a retarded thinking. See my way of thinking is simple, I provide a service or a finished product. I don't care if you have a dong or boobs or both even, you could be black, white, purple, or a green alien from mars for all I care. As long as you are a paying customer then you get treated with respect, cause after all in business/sales/retail the only important part is closing the sale and getting the money in the end. If you piss of your female client by assuming that she wouldn't understand the functionality of a widget, then you don't deserve to make the sale and just need to go live in a cave!

[rerant]

Thankfully I've never had an experience where my gender played a part. Or at least none that were of any significance that I remember them.
However I was once chewed out by a woman in my lane who thought I was being sexist, only addressing her husband and not her.
Ok a few things:
1. I'm a woman, you dingbat harpee.
2. You were yammering away on your cell phone about something I cared not to listen to.
3. HE actually addressed me first, just before you wandered off.
4. Money in his hand + you wandering away = me only addressing him.
I was in a bad mood that day I so said to her, "Well if you weren't too busy with your phone call I might have had a chance to address you."
Her husband got this look on his face that screamed, "Oh snap."
I got the feeling she acts like this a lot and he was amused that someone didn't take her crap.

[Boozy]

I totally agree with you, digilight. But its not so simple to some people. I really believe they do want to make the sale, and they don't want to offend anyone. They just don't know how.

In RK's case, the man selling the trailer seemed flat out incapable of talking to a woman about plumbing and electrical work. When forced, there was an awkward pause and then a mumbled comment about drapes.

It would be like a customer coming into one of our stores and saying, "Please direct all inquiries to this sock puppet on my hand. He'll be making the decisions today." We may do it, but we'd find it difficult to say the least. That's how uncomfortable Trailer Guy was with dealing with RK.

Its a disgusting attitude, but hard to change if that's how you've been raised.

I think there are as many women as men who feel this way. Just look at some of the stories in Unsupportable about females asking for male techs.

[Broomjockey]

It would be like a customer coming into one of our stores and saying, "Please direct all inquiries to this sock puppet on my hand. He'll be making the decisions today." We may do it, but we'd find it difficult to say the least. That's how uncomfortable Trailer Guy was with dealing with RK.

I am totally going to do that some day. I just wish I'd thought of it first!

[Boozy]

I am totally going to do that some day. I just wish I'd thought of it first!

Please please please get it on video.

[Dark-Star]

Boozy, I can't imagine trying to go for any length of time with that fathead as a landlord. How awful!

Guys like that give all of us such a bad name...

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I think there are as many women as men who feel this way. Just look at some of the stories in Unsupportable about females asking for male techs.

Sadly, you are totally, 100 percent right. And that's even worse.

[Sylvia727]

It's farking ridiculous. And sadly, sexists have selective memory. If they meet a guy who doesn't know computers/cars/money, they assume he's having an off day or just doesn't know this particular facet. But a woman is incompetant and ignorant.

[wagegoth]

My husband knows how to hook up a stereo. I pretty much handle everything else, although he's learning. My dad was a mechanic, owned his own gas station. My grandfather drove a truck and also owned a gas station and a tire shop. I'm mechanically inclined. I don't have brothers, and I much preferred helping my dad out in the garage and the barn that hanging out in the kitchen with my mom.

I've never really had a mechanic talk down to me. It's usually been the service manager or the salesman. If I talk to the mechanic, I clearly describe the problem and what I think are the contributing factors. The service managers just seem to work on the assumption that I'm dropping the car off for my husband because he's too busy and I have no idea what goes on with it besides how to adjust the seat and, maybe, turn on the air conditioning and stereo.

What's really funny is that now, due to our schedules, my husband is usually the one dropping off the car and he ends up having to call me to talk to the mechanic (finally found a really good independent one, woo hoo!) to describe the problem.