Unfortunately, misogyny is alive and well.

In this case, it was manifested when a guy kept totally ignoring a female store clerk and other women while communicating normally with her boss and other men.

She found a subtle way to teach him a valuable lesson.

Let’s read the story.

Ignore me for being a woman? Enjoy your sales being cut!

I work at a small shop that employs only my boss (owner, 40s M, asian) and I (20s F, local).

I’ve worked there for 6 years.

I’m the only one to last longer than 2 months on the job (understandable, the place is a mess and the job is quite physical, but hours are flexible and I get along with the owner, so it’s ok).

She knows the ropes.

I know all the salespeople, remember most of the customers, and know almost exactly what we have at all times (my boss doesn’t keep track of what we have).

Add to that my boss’ lack of understanding of how things are often done here (in the country and in this specific town/area), and a language barrier that should have disappeared by now.

He’s been here for 20+ years, but he never made an effort and that’s an advantage for me.

No beating around the bush. But there are challenges.

There’s this older (60s?) guy that’s been selling us gas-related products lately (a few months).

He seems nice to my boss, says hello and makes small talk with male customers.

But I’ve noticed him ignoring me and any non-male customers.

I’ve made it a point to say hi, introduce myself, but he ignored me and talked over me, focusing only on my boss.

She noticed a pattern.

He’d even interrupt when I needed to communicate something job related, acting like his sales were more important than us actually running the shop.

BIG mistake on his part.

Big mistake, huge!

Now, my pettiness started small.

Making a point to be louder when greeting him, like he was losing his hearing.

Subtle jabs around women when he ignored them or tried to redirect boss’ attention to him instead of the customers who needed his help…

But at some point I had enough.

She wanted to make a bigger impression.

The biggest perk of controlling like 90% of the shop myself, is that I know how much space we have, what people ask for, and what we have.

Most shop-customer interactions fall on me, so it’s on me to offer products or alternatives.

And this guy is a small fish in a big sea of other fish.

I started suggesting my boss buys most of what this guy tries to sell to our other suppliers instead.

And what the guy has that others don’t, or any new things, I convince him to buy less.

She has a plan and a system in mind.

To give a few examples, this guy always offers new products and tries to get my boss to buy at least 3-5 to see how they do.

I keep making my boss buy only 1 because the salesman shows up every month anyway.

Or if I know people haven’t been asking about that product or are ok with an alternative, I tell him not to buy it.

There are some gas cans we get at about the same price from another supplier.

There are advantages to this.

So I tell him to get it from the other guys who deliver to us bi-weekly and bring other stuff too.

This makes it easier to us (more frequent deliveries, less chances for the stuff to break, and we have no storage area, so everything has to go on/under the shelves, so we can’t buy much more than we can fit there).

And it’s working as she envisioned.

I know it’s not very exciting, but watching his face fall to disappointment when I discourage my boss, or to annoyance/anger/discomfort when I’m around, is very satisfying.

And to make it a bigger point, whenever he actually acknowledges me from the start and is not a prick to women, I don’t push back as much, or I’ll even let my boss know we’re low on something.

Maybe he’ll learn… Maybe not.

This guy shouldn’t be in sales, he still hasn’t made the “be nice to the lady to sell more” connection in his head just yet.

He might retire without making it, but at that point, it will no longer be my problem.

He had the audacity, so she had the audacity right back at him.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

A reader compliments her.

This commenter shares their thoughts.

Insider information.

I agree.

Yup.

Another reader chimes in.

She’s doing him a huge favor in the long run…

If he finally puts two and two together, that is.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.