No matter how much time passes and how much things change, it seems that there will always be a vocal minority of people who borrowed their cultural worldview from the 1950s. And it apparently doesn’t matter whether they actually lived through that decade or not.
Whether they’re putting women’s style choices and bodies under a microscope , reacting with persistent disbelief when they learn that a woman they know is a scientist, or pigeonholing them into other jobs like nursing or teaching, they’re proof positive that sexism hasn’t gone away.
However, one mechanic’s story does a lot to illustrate that enough has changed that these outdated attitudes don’t get people as far as they used to. And the results are pretty satisfying.
While posting in Reddit’s r/MaliciousCompliance community, one woman described her experiences working at a small garage attached to a car dealership.
In her post , she explained that she was the garage’s only licensed mechanic and that there were many jobs that only her and her male apprentice could do.
She also said that it was common for male customers to second guess her diagnosis on their cars, watch her from the bay door while she worked, and double check her work as soon as they got out into the parking lot.
But on a particularly busy morning, one such customer seemed to outdo them all.
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So while her apprentice was out washing cars and delivering them to customers, she received an order for a service campaign, which was also called a recall.
Apparently, all we need to know is that it’s a process that involves using a scan tool that usually takes about 10 minutes.
But when the customer saw who was about to do this job, he stood up with an alarmed look on his face and said he didn’t want the mechanic working on his car. In response, he was told that since the apprentice was out, he’d have “quite a wait” on his hands.
So he said, “That’s fine. I’ll wait for a guy. I don’t want that chick touching my car.”
But what he didn’t know and what the employee who helped him did was that the apprentice wouldn’t be back for well over an hour.
Over the next hour, he would sit back and get progressively angrier as other cars would come in and get serviced ahead of his.
And when he saw hope in the form of a male employee, he learned that this was a co-op student who wasn’t authorized to do the job he wanted.
Finally, he became fed up and said, “I’ve been sitting here for over an hour and I’ve watched 5 cars go in before mine. My appointment was for 8am, this is getting ridiculous.”
At that point, he said he didn’t care who worked on his car as long as it was a guy.
But when the employee who first helped him ran down the list of male employees, it became clearer that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted.
In this employee’s words, “Well there’s Harmon, but he’s just the car jockey. He doesn’t know how to work on cars. Then there’s Jeet, but he’s about 17. I wouldn’t want him doing the recall, personally. I guess we could ask Mike— but Mike is the parts guy— he doesn’t know how to use the scan tool. The detailers are men, but they know NOTHING about cars.”
This made the customer even angrier and he asked for the service manager.
But when this man arrived, all he had to say was, “That’s my best technician. Those guys take orders from her. You can either wait for her to finish what she’s working on, and then you can ask if she’s still willing to do your work, or you can take your car somewhere else.”
And with that, after wasting two hours waiting for a 10-minute job that could have been done by the mechanic at any time, the customer finally took his car and left empty-handed.
He never came back and unsurprisingly, nobody was terribly bothered by his absence.
h/t: Reddit | unlimitedpatience
