Women

21 stories of salespeople who treated women very differently than men.

One place where 1950&#39;s-era sexism seems to really thrive is in car dealerships, where many people in the industry still seem confused about the fact that women drive and purchase cars. But as most women can probably attest to, this problem is in no way limited to car dealerships.Women and their allies on Reddit are sharing stories of times they experienced sexism while buying a car or other items. These results will make you want to pull a Thelma &amp; Louise, interpret that however you want.Here are 21 infuriating and relatable examples of women getting discriminated against for their gender while trying to spend some damn money:1) From albertagenuinedraft: We were having problems with our water heater and called someone to come take a look at it. My husband happened to take the dog for a walk just as the guy arrived. For some reason he decided he was going to need to cut a giant hole in our wall behind it. I didn&#39;t know any better so I started helping his move stuff out of the way.  Just as he&#39;s getting his saw ready, husband walks in the door. Suddenly his entire story changes and actually all he needs to do is replace a small part. His attitude was completely different and magically he did not need to ruin our drywall. I was pretty frustrated. 2) From Wienenschlagen: I was trying to rent an apartment a few years ago. The landlord (who was a middle-age lady) kept talking about how I needed to find a husband to take care of the paperwork for me.  In fact, a whole lot of our conversation was about how I needed to find a husband. She also made passive-aggressive jabs about how I wasn&#39;t getting any younger. And she kept saying that I should have &quot;a man around&quot; to deal with basic things like changing lightbulbs and taking out the trash.   I wish I could say I didn&#39;t rent from her, but the unit was really nice and cheap for its size. Ironically, every time I needed help with something, she said to deal with her (not her husband), because he was lazy and incompetent. 3) From wpurple: Mom answers phone: &quot;Hello&quot; Phone-sales-guy: &quot;I&#39;d like to talk to the man of the house&quot; Mom: &quot;So would I, but he&#39;s been dead for 5 years now.&quot; 4) From violet1961: There&rsquo;s a car dealership about a ten minutes drive from my parents&rsquo; house in the US that used to not sell vehicles to women unless their husband gave permission. My mom found this around the late 80s to early 90s while car shopping. Of course my parents refused to buy from them. Not sure what the policy on that is now but it&rsquo;s still the same owner. 5) From dogsordiamonds: When we were buying a house we told the lawyer to contact me. He kept contacting my husband instead and not even cc&#39;ing me on emails. The problem was that my husband was working nights and sleeping during the day, so he wouldn&#39;t return calls or check his emails until the business day was already over.  It was so frustrating! We actually had a deal fall through because the seller&#39;s broker did something shady and our lawyer&#39;s response came too late and was incompetent. When we bought our home, we used a different lawyer. 6) From ElectricDanceyPants: I had a guy refuse to rent me an apartment because I&#39;m a woman. I called to ask for details on the place, and he asked if it would be just me or if anyone else would be sharing the apartment. When I said no, it&#39;s just me, he told me a &quot;single lady shouldn&#39;t be living alone&quot;, and he would not rent to me. When I tried to insist on seeing the apartment he yelled over me &quot;GOD BLESS&quot; and hung up. This was 2012. 7) From Bow2Gaijin: My wife told me a story once when she was out with her mom who was looking to buy some new living room furniture. This must have been the early to mid 90s. After dealing with the salesman and picking out what she wanted, he told her that he would need to call her husband to make sure she had his permission to buy new furniture. She just got up and walked out. 8) From wjescott: We were at the BMW dealership. My wife and I are circling the M550i they had on the showroom floor.  A guy comes up to me, &quot;pretty nice, isn&#39;t it?&quot; I sorta shrug. &quot;Lot of horsepower, torque, twin-turbo V8. I think you&#39;d enjoy it.&quot; I shrug again. &quot;Want to take it out?&quot; He asked. I pointed to my wife, &quot;It&#39;s for her. I&#39;m not even looking.&quot;   First words out of his mouth, &quot;oh, do you have any kids?&quot; He sort of smiles, &quot;The X5 or X7 are pretty decent options.  My wife gives him the look that usually sends me out to work on a motorcycle, &quot;No. I have a &#39;15 Jaguar XFR that needs to be replaced. It looks like I need to go to the Mercedes dealership.&quot; She turned and left. Beautiful thing about being married to a woman who likes powerful cars, watching her crush car salesmen. 9) From beeeegirl: A Honda dealer told me to come back with my husband. I&rsquo;m not married and never have been. I called corporate to complain, but they didn&rsquo;t care. 10) From 84th_legislature: I wanted to buy a car that was present on the lot and not already in process with someone else (the kind of car where every dealership has 15+ of that car because it&#39;s kind of their flagship) and while I was allowed to test drive it, it became clear to me that I was NOT going to be allowed to buy it.  They told me they could sell me one, but it wasn&#39;t heeeere yet. I was like can you sell me that one, pointing to one on the lot that was exactly what I was looking for, and they were like ohhhhh no, not thaaat one, that one is not the sport version (I&#39;m looking at it and I see the sport tag and visible sport-tier changes to the exterior).  So I&#39;m like ok you&#39;re weird, that&#39;s fine, I have another car to drive, let me know when &quot;the good one&quot; comes in.  I get a call, I go back to buy the car I asked for. The one that came in is the super luxury premium version. I say no. They&#39;ve got another one, it&#39;s got wheel locks and an upgraded sound system. But hey! It&#39;s $500 off the $3000 difference in price! I&#39;m a dumb woman, that must sound like a good deal to me, right???  I ask again if they&#39;re willing to sell me any of the many cars that meet my criteria on the lot. They tell me that none of those cars exist.  I left and bought a car from another dealership in a different town. That guy said yes, we have a car like that, it&#39;s this one, would you like me to put your name on it? Ok I&#39;ll have it detailed, come test drive it this weekend to be sure and I&#39;ll have the paperwork ready. Bought a car in one day, after spending 2 weeks trying to buy one somewhere else. 11) From pumpkincheetos: During my horse riding days one guy wouldn&rsquo;t sell me a stallion because I was a woman and I couldn&rsquo;t handle him. The stallion needed a &ldquo;strong man like him&rdquo;. 12) From KHeaney: Car salesperson kept drifting the conversation over to my husband when I was buying a car.  Car insurance kept emailing my husband about our joint car insurance policy instead of both of us. When my husband took his car off that policy (he sold it without replacing it), he kept getting all the emails instead of me.  During wedding planning, I was addressed regarding all the details, and my husband was addressed regarding payments. Oh, and waiters always hand my husband the bill and the card machine, even if it&#39;s my card with MRS KHEANEY written on the card. 13) From ummugh: I was at an airport duty free shop looking for a decent bottle of whiskey to get as a Christmas present for a friend. Shop employee came up and asked me what I was looking for, I told him I was deciding on a bottle of whiskey. He asked if it was for a man or woman and I responded, kind of puzzled, why does it matter?  He told me it mattered a lot because women only like sweet drinks, and then in response to the totally baffled look on my face, asked me to explain why, if it wasn&#39;t true, women like Coca Cola so much.  I just...what? Women only liking sweet drinks is a common and irritating stereotype, but his reasoning...that women like Coca Cola, the most popular soda in the world...what?! Okay. 14.) From Wahine468: My mum recently went to purchase her first new car from a dealer and brought my dad along with her. They looked around, a dealer met them and mum said she was after this type of car. The dealer proceeded to show cars like that to dad, following him all around the car yard selling away, so mum left and went and bought one from a different dealer that wasn&rsquo;t sexist and ignoring her.  Mum was pretty fucked off because she&rsquo;s never been in a position to buy a new car before this, and was super excited, but this dealer just wanted to cater to dad. 15.) From Damn_Dog_Inappropes: My favorite story along these lines was the time my hubby and I went to Game Stop to buy me a tiny XBox 360 wireless controller for my tiny hands. The male clerk asked my husband what he needed. I said, &quot;I need one of those small wireless 360 controllers.&quot; He then asked my husband what games I liked to play. My husband said, &quot;My wife can answer her own questions, thanks.&quot; 16.) From bingbong1234: Not a woman, but it&#39;s a relevant story. Took my female SO to the immunologist because she works with bees and was having bad reactions to the stings. They said they might need to do a ~4-hour test to determine some stuff, and she should bring someone to drive her home in case she has a bad reaction while driving. I brought a book and sat in the corner, not paying attention.  She sat directly in front of him, across from his desk, like you normally might if you&#39;re meeting with someone who has an appointment with you. Doc kept talking louder than normal and I eventually noticed that he was directing his questions towards me. My SO would answer him, then he would ask me another question pertaining to her health. He wasn&#39;t even looking at her. When he did address her, he&#39;d call her &#39;honey&#39; and &#39;sweetie&#39; and such.  Eventually, I had to cut him off and remind him that it was not me who scheduled the appointment, rather the adult woman in front of him who he was ignoring to shout at the guy trying to read in the corner. After the appointment I was fuming. SO said &#39;welcome to my world&#39;.  17.) From Glitch_in_the_pink: A couple of years ago I went into my local gaming store to buy an Xbox one. I had my husband with me as I didn&rsquo;t want to be walking around town on my own with a games console as that&rsquo;s asking to be mugged.  Despite me asking for the console and paying for it, the guy serving me absolutely refused to speak to me, talking over my head to my husband who was behind me, he wouldn&rsquo;t even look at me and even used the prefix &ldquo;Sir&rdquo;, as in &ldquo;would you be interested in protecting your console Sir?/would you like to buy an Xbox live subscription to go with it Sir?&rdquo;  Making it absolutely clear that he didn&rsquo;t want to deal with me at all. My husband told him 3 times that I was the one interested in buying the console and he still kept doing it in a really arrogant way. He either wasn&rsquo;t listening or really didn&rsquo;t give a shit. I was so annoyed at his attitude towards me!  There was one of those survey things on the end of the receipt so I did the survey telling the company about my experience and I never got a response back.  A few months later the company was having financial difficulty and they closed down a bunch of shops with that one being one of the first because it wasn&rsquo;t profitable, which I&rsquo;m really not shocked by. 18.) From Yurath123: I was trying to deal with a phone shop that contracted some of their repair work out to a third party.  They needed me to leave the phone with them overnight so it could be fixed. Due to my work schedule, I wouldn&#39;t be able to pick it up for two weeks and I didn&#39;t want to be without it that long.  I asked if it was possible for me to swing by the third party repair shop myself, and he hemmed and hawed and then said yes, but refused to give me the address because I was female and it was in a &quot;rough neighborhood.&quot;  He demanded that my boyfriend come by the shop to get the address, because he didn&#39;t think a female should be unaccompanied. Unaccompanied anywhere, it was implied, but especially not in that neighborhood.  Anyway, I did eventually cause enough of a scene to get the repair shop&#39;s business card and went myself. The area might be worse at night when most of the offices were closed but in the middle of the afternoon, it just looked like an ordinary business park. 19.) From maybeiamonreddit: I&#39;m in tech and needed a new laptop. Now everything I do is online, so a Chromebook was perfect. The store guy was talking over me, didn&#39;t let me finish my sentences, and kept &quot;explaining&quot; that I should have a &quot;real&quot; laptop even though I tried telling him I know what I&#39;m talking about and no I don&#39;t.  It was super annoying because I could tell he did it because I&#39;m a woman and obviously can&#39;t know anything about computers or laptops. I was honest and told him &quot;my dude, I lost count of the times you talked over me.  I know which one I want, and it is highly annoying that you don&#39;t take my word for it and disregard everything I say. It could easily be that I know more about these things than you because it has been my job for years. I&#39;ll get my laptop somewhere else.&quot; Still infuriates me to think about it 20.) From awhq: I had decided to buy a car. I knew the make, model, color and package I wanted. So I take my lunch hour and go to a dealer near my work. The salesman greats me and I say I would like this car with these features in this color, but I need to know how much you will give me for my trade-in.  The salesman looks at me and says &quot;If you&#39;re not serious, don&#39;t waste my time.&quot;  Okay. I&#39;m not sure what it was about my saying I wanted a specific car and just needed to know my trade-in value that indicated I wasn&#39;t serious. Oh...wait...yes I do. I&#39;m a woman.  I walked out. After work, I went to the dealership by my house and walked out with the car I wanted. I&#39;d like to say that I drove my new car back to the first dealership the next day but as someone who worked 50 hours a week and had a husband with two small kids, ain&#39;t no one got time for that nonsense. 21.) From thesmaugofseventeen: I had to buy a new vehicle in March after I was hit by a drunk driver. I already knew what I wanted. A 2019 Rav4 XLE. Cool.  So I start going to places with my boyfriend and tell them exactly what I want and ask for prices. They ask how much I&#39;m looking to spend and what I&#39;m going to put down... to my boyfriend. Who promptly says, &quot;it&#39;s her money, ask her.&quot; And they continue talking to him. About the features with off-roading and what kind of trails you can take this thing on, etc. And he&#39;s just sitting there with a blank stare on his face.   Then the guy turns to me to ask what colour I want. That was the only question he had for me. Because why would I care about anything else. So when I said, &quot;I don&#39;t care,&quot; he just would not have it. He insisted. Until I asked, &quot;Do the red ones go faster or something? If I&#39;m just getting a price who cares about the colour, and why are you pushing it when I have clearly started I don&#39;t care?&quot;  He got me a price, and asked for my business. I said no and left to use his offer to haggle with other dealers. Where I encountered the same. Fucking. Thing. At 4 other dealers. Same questions about everything. One of them asked me 5 times about colour.  I bought my rav from the last place of the day, the only one who actually spoke to me and not my boyfriend. I got a very good price on it. And I got it in red. Because they go faster. Almost every woman I know has stories like these. In case anyone ever questions why women love to shop online.

One place where 1950&#39;s-era sexism seems to really thrive is in car dealerships, where many people in the industry still seem confused about the fact that women drive and purchase cars. But as most women can probably attest to, this...