I'm a manager at a small locally-owned vape shop, and about half of the week I run the shop. On these days I'm the one in charge, but often times my boyfriend will stay to keep me company because business is slow a lot, and he usually works at night. We keep it professional at work.

This being said, I'm the type of manager who will bend over backwards to help customers when they need something, and I'm always enthusiastic when someone walks through the door. The problem is, some of my male customers will completely ignore me and walk straight towards my boyfriend with their questions.

Example being today: Two men walked into the store, and I greeted them by saying, "Hey, how can I help you guys?" They completely ignored my presence even though I was standing behind the counter, and walked up to my boyfriend who was sitting down eating a bagel. He directed them towards me but they were completely disinterested in speaking to me,, and when I tried to interject with advice on their vapes, they completely ignored me and waited for my boyfriend to tell them the exact same thing.

Another customer, also today, came in and asked for help because his batteries were being drained too quickly, and e-liquid kept leaking out. I told him it was the coil, changed it out for a new one, siphoned out the e-liquid and put it back into the tank, made sure it was working properly, and rang him up for his purchases. At no point in this exchange did he and my boyfriend speak at all, but when he was leaving I said "thankyou, have a great day!" which he ignored, and walked up to my boyfriend to shake his hand and told HIM "Thanks man."

I dont know if its because I'm a woman, or the fact that I look way younger than I am, but it put me in a bad mood. This usually doesn't happen too much, but today it was a common occurrence.

I've even had customers demand to speak to my manager and not believe me when I told them I WAS the manager for that day, and then ask my boyfriend, who would tell them "Yes she is in charge today."

I've heard about what you are experiencing before. A friend of mine back in college worked for a while at an Autozone and received the same kind of treatment. And she knew her stuff.

I experienced being shoved aside and talked over when I took my dad along with me to drop my car off for body work after an accident. Sometimes men go all into a man-to-man talk mode. And they don't even realize how rude (or how obviously sexist depending on the situation) they are being.

Ugh, I hate that. I got that when I was working at a video game store and I know as much as the guys, if not more.

The next imbecile to treat me like that is getting asked, simply, "Do I have to have a penis to be taken seriously?"

my father is a mechanic, and I've always wanted to learn. I used to work in his shop doing paperwork, but he would never teach me any field work like how to change oil, etc. I learned how to change a tire, and begged him to teach me stick shift. He told me, "Sweetheart I love you, but you dont need to learn that because I'm here, your brother is here, and someday you'll have a man to do it for you." Later I found out he taught my cousin.

I dont think its particularly hateful or malicious, just a habit passed down by the older generation. My father is a saint and I love him to pieces, but I always wish he would've taught me how to work on cars like he did the rest of my family.

I want to believe these customers meant no disrespect, but it still didn't feel very good seeing as I was the expert on that stuff. ;-;

I had a friend who worked at gamestop who received the same treatment although she was the acting manager. Its really frustrating. D:

I didn't want to name names but yep, Gamestop sucks for that. I found out that I was more in the know than the guys the second someone came in and asked if a PS4 was an HDMI or the old school input and I answered HDMI and I was right. But it was second guessed because I look rather feminine in reality.

Next time that happens simply have your bf tell them that he's not the expert. Let him get you and tell them you work here amd have the info needed. If he doesn't vape have him tell them that because also another aspect seems to be they listen to someone who works with the equipment over someone they deem clueless because they don't do the vaping.

Also if you haven't read them there's two sites I like reading notalwaysright.com and retailhellunderground.com and sadly you'll see its a common story due to perceived age and being female can make people go stupid. Among other funny things. Sometimes there's good customer burns and comebacks from workers in situations.

my boyfriend does vape, and he looks much older than me even though we're the same age. People just assume he's the boss haha, but he'll usually try to direct them towards me; he doesn't take kindly to customers being disrespectful to me. c:

I’m a manager where I work and can assure you sometimes customers are the worst. Seems like some days are much worse than others too

haha definitely. When I worked at taco bell a lady threw a taco at me o.O

I work at walmart. I’m surprised no one has thrown a taco at me tbh

I low key just did a walmart application. Omg

I'm still at Wal-Mart... My advice is don't go there unless you are desperate to not be hungry or homeless

Good to know haha, thanks.

They’re always hiring. Honestly I like it there, but my store is a really nice one

What position are you? :)

Cashier. More specifically self checkout lol more like nonstop headache

I’m a csm. I had 6 call outs and 3 no calls today just from my cashiers ;(

I worked at Walmart for just over 5 years and the amount of crap our store put up with was ridiculous.

Among the worst:

Guy attacking customers and punching them and staff on Christmas Eve: because he was asked to stop smoking up in the lobby and wasn’t happy about it

A guy following female employees around the store, asking them out and trying to touch them

Kids hitting fire alarms in the mall as a prank, causing fire trucks to come, alarm finally shut off? They did it again and MORE fire trucks came

Guy throwing a bag at my head because I wouldn’t let him use someone else’s credit card (at this point if we let them and got caught we’d be in a TON of trouble

Our bathrooms getting fixed at the front of the site so they had no water and were blocked off... people trying to break in to use then

People breaking down broken bathroom stall doors to use them and rubbing their poop all over everything in sight

Teenager taking a can of whipped cream and filling dozens of shoes in the shoe department with whipped cream

So much more happened but those were some of the top WTF moments

it's crazy what people would do now a days. I work as a waitress and people just complains about price and stuff all the time. It's hard to deal with stuff like that but your sound much worst

We had regulars that would come in and berate the cashiers (I was a cashier) for everything and anything. One elderly lady used racial slurs against a cashier for following store policy and NOT altering the price of what she wanted, after being denied by two OTHER cashier who she yelled at, elderly lady then went to a supervisor and was given the price change. I was so pissed off I went to the supervisors supervisor and raised hell.

Customers could say anything to you and some managers and CSMs didn’t care. There were times customers screamed at us with supervisors standing by and they wouldn’t even come help us. It was just awful what customers were allowed to do.

Only once did a manager come to my aid when I was being screamed at, and he yelled at the customer, took me off til and told me the customer was just being an asshole and not to worry about it. Loved that manager but he was only there for a year before he got promoted to district manager cause he was that good, but he was the one of the only managers who cared about his staff

oh the price thing we have happen all the time. I help the hostess too bc she doesn't understand English that much. People complain about the price of our food saying it's high but the amount of food you get for it is alot but still we have a lady yesterday who came in to pick up her food she order and was complaining about the price and how we charge to substitute lo mein instead of rice and the lady up front say we can't it will be extra and she was saying how other restaurants does it and so. I overheard her after she got her food and left for hours she came back saying how our food is old which it's not bc we make the food to the order not have it all cooked up. We end up refunding it for her _. _