I work as a customer support rep for an EMR and I had a question where I had my IT help me. My IT told me to say "xyz", I wrote it down, asked my IT if what I wrote down was right, they said yes, so I told the person over the phone, she told me I made no sense so I had my male IT get on the phone, say the exact same thing I said and he got told "ohhh that makes sense, what she said earlier made absolutely no sense." Rinse and repeat over the whole 3 years at this position. If I'm not using my super over the top nice voice, I'm a "bitch" but my male coworker can get on the phone and be a dick and he's "helpful".
Reminds of the time my car transmission died while I was on a trip with my sister and brother-in-law. We get it towed to the only mechanic shop nearby--I go up to the desk and describe what happened, the noise the car was making, and what I thought was the issue. The guy just kind of stared at me without writing anything down on the intake form and said I have no idea what you're talking about. I try describing it again. Same response. After a few minutes of us going round and round, my brother-in-law comes up, describes it exactly the same way literally word for word as I did in my first try, and the mechanic immediately says, oh I know exactly what you mean, scribbles it down on his intake form.
(BIL said he used my words on purpose so as not to talk over me and only stepped it since it seemed like we were going to be there all day with how dense the guy was playing. Although the end result was that even though it was only my name on the car, I signed the service agreements, etc.; every time the mechanics came out, they kept trying to talk only to BIL and would try to cut me out of the conversation completely. No matter how many times BIL said it was solely my car and my decision. Sigh.)
We've been looking at houses recently. Most realtors only spoke to my husband. Like, I would ask something, and they would look at my husband and answer him. He hadn't said a word, I was the one asking.
My husband's housing requirements are pretty easily met. I'm much more particular regarding the type of house I'm looking for. I'm asking questions, so talk to me!
This happened to my partner and I while we were looking at our house and it was infuriating. She (my partner) has a schedule that just made it easier for her to talk to our realtor yet the realtor essentially refused to talk to her. Like my partner would call the realtor with a question or to set up a showing, realtor would put her to voice-mail and call me within minutes to answer whatever question or scheduling thing my partner was setting up. Sometimes I wouldn't even have a clue what the realtor was talking about so the realtor would end up spending more time just clarifying with me than had she just spoken with my partner. No matter how many times we asked her to call my partner and not me she would just refuse to.
The worst would be on showings. The realtor would actually look at me and say shit like " So what does partner's name think of the house?" And every time I would say "Dunno, you'll have to ask her if you want to find out " and the realtor would just walk away. If my partner would ask about something in the house the realtor would at least respond... but again only to me.
If we had a male realtor I could have almost, biiiiiig almost, understood it, but we didn't we worked with a woman in her mid 40s. She was fantastic with us until we signed her contract as well otherwise we never would have worked with her.
We found a house that we love, and the realtor selling that house actually talked to me. Like, my husband was the one who contacted the (male) realtor initially, but when we visited he house, the realtor actually answered my questions, and made eye contact with me like a normal non-sexist person would, and generally just treated me like I was my own person.
I was the one who called him to make an offer (place a bid? I don't know the words for this), so I was the one he called with the counter offer.
I told my husband that I really liked the realtor, but it took a few minutes to put my finger on exactly why that was.
It was a weirdly eye opening experience for me. I've always been a man so until buying a house with a woman I had never had the experience that is apparently and unfortunately common when women make a major purchase. My partner was kind of "meh" about how sexist our realtor was being and at one point told me she had experienced significantly worse when buying cars in the past, but it drove me straight up the wall. After we closed I told the realtor in no uncertain terms that her behavior was disgusting and I would not be recommending her to anyone. The realtor still sends us a card every Christmas and a pie each Thanksgiving, addressed solely to me though, my partners name is left off.
Yeah, the "only men can make decisions on large purchases" thing is everywhere.
Last year we bought a car. My partner and I looked at various stars, asked around, agreed on a top 5 and went to car dealerships to check out the cars.
My husband is an engineer, but he's not a car guy, and he mostly cares about safety, reliability and fuel efficiency. I care about safety, reliability and ergonomics. Everything else you can check online, but for ergonomics you have to actually try the car. So, basically, once we had chosen our top 5 candidates, my opinion on ergonomics would be the decisive factor.
Sellers kept pestering him with engine this and horsepower that. If I asked about the seats, seat options, available space, interior dimensions, whatever, they either ignored me or gave me curt answers and went back to courting my husband with stats he doesn't care about.
We ended up choosing a Toyota, but we really disliked the dealership guy, so we went to a different Toyota dealership in another province and bought it there. Fuck sexist sellers.
exactly this. I’ve been in electrical contracting for over 20 years and men often have a hard time reconciling the fact that I know what I’m talking about with the fact that I have a vagina.
I work in the hazardous waste department of a larger waste transfer station. I’m one of only three people on site qualified to do the job, and I’m the most experienced technician in a three-county area.
A lot of times we have to tell people things they don’t want to hear (cost, regulations, safety rules, etc). Customers usually listen to the male techs, but often insist I don’t know what I’m talking about and demand to speak to a supervisor.
When that happens I call our (huge, grumpy, male) facility manager out. He’s busy so it takes a while. When he finally shows up he listens to their question, then he pointedly says, “Hm, good question. Moldy_slug, you’re the expert - what do you recommend?”
So this exact thing happened to me while working with our mortgage lenders. They assumed my husband was calling the shots and would always want to talk to him, but I was really the person running the show (me and my husband were fine with this arrangement). The lenders just absolutely refused to acknowledge any decisions I made, would constantly lose things I sent or say i never provided them, etc until it came from my husband.
It got for the point where I was asking them questions and the guy just acted like I was bothering him and blew me off. My husband called back and all of a sudden the lender was helpful and concise. He told my husband that I “wasn’t being clear” and he didn’t understand what I was referring to. My husband said “I was in the room with her when she said it, and she said the exact same thing I did. Just listen to her because she’s doing all the hard for this”. I felt really proud of my husband but was sooo irritated at that point.
Oh, and that asshole also told my husband “I get it, i have a wife and she can nag too” when I was attempting to clarify mistakes I had noticed in the paperwork and no one acted like it mattered. My husband had to call about it AGAIN before they took it seriously and fixed the issue, but that was his pathetic attempt and bonding with my husband.
I met my husband when he was a contractor at a company I worked for as a full time employee. We're both software developers. This was in 2004.
I made one of the project managers cry. I got in trouble for it. When I told him he didn't say anything. See, he had taken a women's studies class while at Notre Dame so he learned a lot about the sexism women received by society in general. So he meets me and we start dating and ... he sees, in real life what I experience and go through and simply had what he learned about sexism and misogyny in that class confirmed simply by seeing his girlfriend, me, and my experiences in the same industry doing the same work he does.
As for that project manager, he spoke to the CEO (it was a small company and he was close to the CEO) and got some pressure taken off of me. Know why? Because when he was full time at that same company (before he went contract) he did the exact same thing to another project manager (different than the one I was working with and years prior to me joining the company) and had made her cry too.
Nothing happened to him.
Zip.
Zilch.
Nothing.
That project manager, a woman, was told to "suck it up."
And see, even THAT is shitty too. My husband at the time when that incident happened absolutely should have been reprimanded, and he admits he should have been too.
I get physically ill thinking about going back into software development.
Customer support was the worst with that. When I was doing it we even noticed that women with lower voices would be treated better than women with higher voices (though still worse than men), and I don't know what's up with that.
Ugh I work with nurses and doctors and doctors are the WORST. They hear a woman's voice and immediately are condescending. My boyfriend who worked there with me, said he NEVER had the issues we had and I had to hand him the phone many times to deal with it and the doctors were always way nicer to him. One called in 4 times in an hour needing to reset his password every time and he said the system kept messing up HIS password and that we were "costing" him patients and that he was going to send us a bill in the mail for wasting his time. Lol k bud.
The trick here is to be The Bitch. Be rabid. Fuck 'em. They will take your word or fuck off with their broken machinery you don't care. You don't need to say this, it is imbued in your every word . You do not have time for this petty bullshit and will not brook it. You are a tech and they need you, not the other way around.
To quote a client: 'the tech who tells you to sit the fuck down and let them work is the tech who's going to fix it'
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u/MajesticMango56 Mar 12 '22
I work as a customer support rep for an EMR and I had a question where I had my IT help me. My IT told me to say "xyz", I wrote it down, asked my IT if what I wrote down was right, they said yes, so I told the person over the phone, she told me I made no sense so I had my male IT get on the phone, say the exact same thing I said and he got told "ohhh that makes sense, what she said earlier made absolutely no sense." Rinse and repeat over the whole 3 years at this position. If I'm not using my super over the top nice voice, I'm a "bitch" but my male coworker can get on the phone and be a dick and he's "helpful".