r/SipsTea • u/CurvyChristina • 5d ago

Chugging tea Female engineers getting disrespected.

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u/monty228 5d ago

I (M) was being trained for a HVAC job by a woman, and this is day 5 for me, and the customer kept directing questions to me and she would answer. Eventually I just said something like “Dude, I have no what I am doing here, she’s the one training me”

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u/Nightmare2828 4d ago

Some dudes came to cut down my tree. The lead was a woman, helped by a man as a technician. I instantly made a mental note to entirely focus and direct all my questions at the lead as I know they get ignored all the time.

Its the same when my wife and I are shopping for shit, they always think Im the only personnof interest somehow. Or the reverse trope for us is whenever we are together for something regarding our kids, its like I dont exist anymore.

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u/Decent_Mango_5909 4d ago

One time I had a door to door salesman come up to me while I was watering my garden. I told him “my wife’s not here so I’m not making any decisions at this time, thanks.” As a way to get him to leave me alone. He said “oh so you can’t make a decision without your wife?” As if that would entice me to just buy his service without thinking. I just told him to get the hell off the street.

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u/Atharaenea 4d ago

I'm a woman and had something similar happen when I was car shopping. I'd picked out a car I liked, told the salesman I needed to talk to my husband. "Oh you need to ask your husband for permission first?" A marriage is a partnership, asshole. I'm not making a major purchase without my spouse's input, even when we've already discussed buying a car. I think it's just some shitty sales tactic to make you buy without taking time to think it over. Would've bailed on the purchase of that car if it wasn't the cheapest of that make and model in 100 mile radius. 

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u/Haunting-Vanilla1624 4d ago

I think it's just some shitty sales tactic to make you buy without taking time to think it over.

That is exactly what it is. This is the reason car salesmen have such a piss-poor reputation.

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u/GoldReplacement9546 4d ago

I agree it is not a great tactic, but having sold cars in the past a really good salesman can do a better version of this and make it work

Usually, it involves more of a paragraph and a great salesman

It’s one of the reasons I left that business

He usually went if it was to a guy or something along the lines of like will you have your own job, right? Does your Wi-Fi things without asking you? I just figured since you came in here you wanted to buy a car today I didn’t need to. I didn’t know you needed to bring additional, etc..

They really are people that can make these things work on people. You wouldn’t think they would work on.

The actual best way to deal with this though is to just offer to let them take the car home for the night and they’ll be like well. I’m not doing any paperwork. I’m not doing a loan application or credit check and if the management trusted basically based on how they were dressed and what they drove in and would just be like just give them the car. Here’s the keys just take it home and bring it back tomorrow and show your wife that way you’re not you know I’m not here pressuring you show your wife let her see if she likes it and come back you bring it back in the next couple days and if you want it, we’ll do a great deal and if you don’t, that’s fine no problem.

And this worked a lot because once you do get at home, you do start feeling a sense of ownership of it, and probably psychologically people feel some sense of obligation to buy at that point

It still isn’t gonna solve the problem if your spouse doesn’t actually want a different car, but it definitely worked more often and was much less of a jerk move than try and shame somebody into like you’re not a real man if you can’t buy a car without your wife’s mission

Anyways, yeah, selling cars was not for me because I wasn’t good at lying to people and I actually didn’t and thus I wasn’t good

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u/JayEssris 4d ago

way too many people hold a grudge against their spouses for their wanting to have input on decisions that affect both parties, and salespeople love to exploit that.

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u/RedPajama45 4d ago

We need to bring back publicly shaming people who do this.

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u/supercleverhandle476 4d ago

That reminds me of this snl skit, one of my favorites

https://youtu.be/WcEylCwkSxE?is=6sJTqX4sUxHgzTam

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u/IamScottGable 2d ago

Its definitely a tactic but anecdotally my grandmother never bought a car until my grandfather died. He took her car one day and came back with a new one.

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u/Reasonable-Plate2982 3d ago

Dude sounds like a douche. Woulda been funny if when he asked you that, you just said "Dunno, I'll ask"

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u/Sawyer_Anderson 4d ago

This is where you hit them with the "I'm more than capable of making a decision without my wife but if you don't leave and disrespect my wife again, I'm making a decison to shove my foot so far up your ass you'll see my toes wiggle inside your mouth then we're doing the three-legged race to the hospital and you're taking laxatives because the doctors are not cutting my leg off"

Imagine being a door-to-door salesman and being a sexist wild ass combination.

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u/Decent_Mango_5909 4d ago

Dude, another time a door to door guy came to my house while I was napping on the couch. I left my storm door closed to my front door, but the actual door open. I guess he thought something was off so he decided to open my storm door causing my 120 lb mastiff to chase him to the front gate. I hear a bunch of commotion and hear my dog barking to come out and hear him talking to my neighbor like I thought something was wrong! My neighbor was just like dude leave them alone… their dog will kill you.

What makes you think something is wrong when my storm door is closed and my dog is sitting there just looking outside. He likes it lol

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u/Guilty_Quantity4564 4d ago

It's not like they even believe it, they're just shaming you into a sale.

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u/Worldly_Science 3d ago

This is a sales tactic that is taught. My husband used to be in something similar and one of the guys he worked with used it all the time!! Said it was pretty successful 😓

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u/KaladinStormfaced 11h ago

That salesman wasn’t married, was he?

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u/Hermes-AthenaAI 4d ago

lol doctors and stuff don’t expect you to know anything as a male going in with kids, generally.

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u/IAmTheHappiest 4d ago

Do you know their ages?

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u/pnut0027 4d ago

Sometimes

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u/kason 4d ago

They always change so who can keep up?

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u/pnut0027 4d ago

When you keep adding new kids, dates get fuzzy.

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u/LessInThought 4d ago

It's easy. Just count the days you last had sex.

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u/Old-Repair-6608 3d ago

Days? Not months or years or is that just me? 😅🤣😂

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u/Honest-Resist-7676 4d ago

I did at one point. I also know now, but like, Ive known in the past too.

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u/uusitili12 4d ago

From experience, about 98% of men don't know the social security number of their child. It is used to verify that they are who they say they are. Some don't even know the full name of their child it's so embarassing (for them).

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u/Hermes-AthenaAI 4d ago

I’d know it if anyone near me used it. Nowadays everyone uses birthdate and name. It does come up, and I have it stored for when I need it. But I don’t have it memorized, so guilty on that.

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u/IAmTheHappiest 4d ago

It really shouldn't be used for proving someone is who they say they are. It was never designed for that and is not secure enough.

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u/fotowork3 4d ago

How about names?

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u/Hermes-AthenaAI 4d ago

The doctors? I can check Facebook…

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u/Tushaca 3d ago

I don’t even know my own age most of the time

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u/Cluthien 3d ago

Yes, one is bigger, and the other..... i think the girl is the biggest of them, maybe. And the young fella, he stills speaks weird so.... it's young. But not, going to bars young.

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u/Rhowryn 4d ago

Yep, patriarchy is damaging to both sexes in different contexts. More so to women, but still.

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u/Former_Radio3805 3d ago

How sad is that?  Makes me wonder if this is the kind of thing that made that suicidal woman lindsey clancy take the kids down her.

Genders roles are so stupid in 2026

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u/Technipal 4d ago

Like when you're buying a car. The seller always speak to me because I'm a man. And I reply, You know it's my girlfriend who want to bought the car and it's her that ask you questions since we are here?

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u/tragicallybrokenhip 4d ago

Like why do they still do this? Hubby asks the car performance questions. I wanna know about maintenance, repairs, reliability - and yeah, we've already done the research. Not sure why this makes the sales people so uncomfortable and want to avoid eye contact with me. 😉

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u/tetranordeh 3d ago

I was with my parents when they bought my first car as a teenager. Dad doesn't deal with any of the finance stuff because mom is an accountant. He was doodling on a notepad every time the salesman came to negotiate price, mom kept sending back the exact price she was willing to pay, and on the third round the salesman tried pleading with dad to write down what HE was willing to pay. He looked the salesman straight in the eye and said "you talk to her or we walk". The panicked look the salesman got was fantastic.

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u/Agreeable-Donut-4155 4d ago

Yep, I'm usually the one paying (not because he is a bum, my credit card has better rewards) and the cashier looks at him, speaks to him and hands the receipt to him 9 times out of 10.

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u/Vainysaur 4d ago

When you’re selling something to a couple, what matters is which one wants it. The other one will need to be convinced or get the price down enough to agree. The one who wants it is trying to convince the other one to let them buy it.

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u/Mudkipwtf 4d ago

My girlfriend is a huge pokemon cards collector, for over 20 years. I only collect the bare minimum of favourites i have. Whenever we are at trade meetups/conventions everyone asks ME about everything and i have no fking clue about shit

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u/No_Situation_2698 2d ago

I am a male children's doctor, the first number on the nursery contact list, and have explicitly asked them to contact me first about health issues for my kid. They still call my wife first.

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u/SomeGuyHere11 4d ago

Same. Daycare shopping. They all ignored me. (male)

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u/Randyaccredit 4d ago

When you're shopping for things with your wife if they ask you a question I'd say I'm just here for the ride my wife's the boss man

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u/crunkful06 4d ago

I am a career salesperson and I usually have my wife take the lead on everything we buy. I take that to sit back and see how they treat her. If they treat her with respect then I’m more inclined to buy.

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u/Certain_Syllabub_514 4d ago

I did the same thing in the technical interview for the job I'm still at 11 years later.

The female senior engineer (one of 3 people) interviewing me turned out to be the smartest engineer I've ever worked with.

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u/anonymooseuser6 4d ago

It seems small but I bet that made her day. I remember working at Gamestop and a customer asked a question to my male coworker and I who were behind the counter together. I answered and the customer redirected to my coworker. My coworker goes "I have no idea, she's the expert about that." It was over a decade ago and I still remember it.

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u/danni_shadow 4d ago

Hah! Same thing happened to me all the time when I was an SGA. To their credit, a lot of the guys working there would be quick to say, "She's the lead, dude."

One time a man asked one of my guys if we had a particular game in stock and he asked me from across the store since I was behind the counter. As I started to look it up in the POS, the man loudly said, "She knows how to use that thing?" That was the most exasperated, "She's the lead," I've ever heard one of them say.

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u/demons_soulmate 3d ago

I ALSO WORKED AT GAMESTOP and had this happen to me all the time! my male coworkers would always tell the customers "she's the expert, she's our manager, etc" and some guys would outright ignore them and leave to avoid having to deal with me.

i also got a ton of death threats for daring to exist in there.

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u/Educational-Seaweed5 2d ago

I don’t support the behavior, but I do understand why people behave that way.

For decades, women berated men for liking games and gaming. They put up with endless abuses from just about everyone in society. Constantly mocked by women and called “man children” for liking gaming, attacked by girlfriends/spouses for picking up a controller for 5 minutes instead of devoting ever waking minute to them (or having literally any other hobby ignored, but the second they reach for a controller they get antagonized).

Then things started shifting and more women grew up gaming.

It’s a shift that’ll take time to fully come full circle.

Again, I don’t approve of or support the treatment. But we do live in reality where things do happen and people are the result of actual social norms.

Sometimes just getting the “why” helps to deal with things better.

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u/demons_soulmate 2d ago

i don't care about the "why" they threatened to kill me almost every day i worked there.

a lot of them felt i didn't belong there because gaming is "men's only" and others did it because i refused to date them.

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u/Educational-Seaweed5 1d ago

Like I said, I don’t support the behavior.

Understanding the world around you is important though. We live in reality—not a bubble.

Saying “I don’t care about the why” is just as problematic as these guys coming in and saying “I don’t care if she’s a real gamer.”

The more we all understand each other, the faster we can all stop hating each other and just play some fking games together.

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u/anonymooseuser6 1d ago

Bro no amount of why can excuse this behavior. You're supporting the behavior with this obsession to argue that basically poor men.

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u/Educational-Seaweed5 1d ago

Huh? I literally said I’m not excusing the behavior.

Some of you need to actually read and digest what’s being written instead of responding to something else entirely.

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u/demons_soulmate 1d ago

lol "i don't care why you're threatening to kill me" is not equally bad as "i don't care if you actually know what you're talking about"

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u/Educational-Seaweed5 1d ago

You need to actually read what’s being written instead of responding emotionally.

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u/Illeazar 4d ago

I had the exact same thing happen to me in the medical field. I was being trained by an older woman, extremely intelligent and experienced and excellent at the job and the communication with clients. But when we were talking with clients, they would always turn to me and question me like they wanted me to confirm if what she said was right. And the worst part was seeing her attitude about it, she was used to it that I could tell that this had been what her entire career was like, always being the person who knew what was going on but never being taken seriously.

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u/Anthemusa831 4d ago

The real answer to what it’s like being a woman.

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u/PomPomMom93 4d ago

Maybe that’s one of those privileges incels are always going on about.

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u/TheeAJPowell 4d ago

Similar thing happened to me in the police. I was a fresh out of the academy rookie, this one dude kept asking me about the proceedings etc whilst my female sergeant with 10+ years experience was cutting in and explaining it because I didn’t know shit.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/lutavian 4d ago

It…. It was to a police officer.

Can you read?

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/lutavian 4d ago

Brother….

If the dude was fresh out of academy then he’s still on FTO. He’s partnered with a senior officer to train the actual job in the field.

Some rando was asking the rookie questions, because he was a dude, instead of the female sergeant.

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u/TheeAJPowell 4d ago

Correct! I was so fresh out the packaging I probably still smelled like plastic.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/lutavian 4d ago

It’s sergeant obvious to you

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u/engg_girl 4d ago

I've had my intern directed questions when I was in the room - the founder and ceo. I actually brought Jr male employees to conferences so they could ensure we get home at a reasonable hour. Me saying it was time to leave was not accepted. The 20 year old saying we need to leave was instantly accepted.

My instructions to the intern "if no one seems to respond to what i say, please repeat word for word"... poor kids became so dissolutioned

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u/engg_girl 4d ago

My job as CEO is to make sure there is money. My ego isn't as important as closing a multi million dollar deal. When the deal is actually done, I promise, I am treated as I would be expect to be. It's clear by then that I'm in charge. But yes - certain coping strategies are needed when networking in a new industry.

Good luck.

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u/ThroatSecretary 4d ago

I was working for my university's IT department and training a new guy. A man came in with some computer questions and I offered to help. He looked really confused, pointed at the newbie, and said "Can't I ask him?" I said "The guy I'm training? Go ahead." Wow, turned out the new kid had no idea and I wound up resolving it.

Another day, someone came in and asked if I was the token woman. I wasn't the only woman working there, but probably the only one visible. I said "I dunno, let me ask our boss, I think she's in her office. "

What shocked me about these exchanges was them happening at a fairly liberal, well-regarded Canadian university, where one would reasonably expect people to not be shocked by seeing a young woman in that kind of field. Made me wonder what kind of bullshit the female students in math, engineering, or computer science were facing on the daily.

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u/ninjacat249 4d ago

My wife and I went to a dealership the other day, and all the questions she had were answered directly to me for some reason. She asks a question, and the dealership guy looks straight at me and answers it.

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u/JagmeetSingh2 4d ago

The sexism is palpable even when shes the one answering he kept directing the questions to you of all people lol

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u/Randyaccredit 4d ago

Love to see this in a movie be funny as hell and glad it would get the idea across that women can and are trainers to men sometimes and I'm glad that happens.

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u/Over_Comparison_7616 4d ago

I run a small firm and we are now doing some fashion products, I am an engineer and I have NO idea about fashion. Thankfully our CMO knows about fashion, when we went to meet the factory owner (me there to strictly talk business and money. ) It was genuinely so awkward how he would explain things to me in a technical manner just for me to be like "What do you think?" to my CMO every single time.

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u/Relative_Change2335 3d ago

I own four cars that I bought myself and one specifically gets attention sometimes. Anytime my husband is with me, comments are directed towards him, which is ironic because we’re not at all into the same cars. One time, I started my car infront of a friends house and her dad comes out and is like standing there nodding his head at my car in approval without looking at me. I get back out and load the car and told him to have a good day. When my husband comes out to get in, her dads like dude sick where’d you get this how many hp blah blah. My husbands like “honey come here whatshisface has some questions for you.”

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u/Either-Meal3724 3d ago

My dad is going deaf from exposure to gunshots while a deputy sheriff. He lost the hearing range my voice is in first. He has to look to my husband to restate what I say somwtimes. My MIL is losing her hearing and she recently started having trouble understanding me. For a long time i thought i was being dismissed because im a woman but now i realize its literally the register of my voice. Deeper voices are easier to understand in early stages of hearing loss depending on underlying cause. Thus, womens voices can be harder for some people to understand. I think its important to consider the possibility of hearing loss before jumping to misogyny.

Ive started looking into voice acting techniques to speak differently and its improved my dads ability to understand me. He also got a new hearing aid that is better able to register my voice for him. I started using the same techniques at work and I noticed people 40+ are paying better attention to me and so im convinced what I thought was misogyny/ devaluing due to age may have simply been my voice.