'Sexist' salesman insisted on speaking with 'man of the house,' so widow showed up with her 'strong, silent' husband
Women continue to deal with the stereotypical and discriminative mindsets of society. For married women, things often get more complicated. With the husband considered the head of the family, a woman or wife is considered a secondary person. A woman, u/Practical-Society-47, shared that she was unfortunately part of this stigma even after the passing of her husband. As a widow, the woman was doing her best to live her life but when a sexist salesperson knocked on her door and tried to ignore her response, she had an epic reaction. The man demanded the ‘man of the house’ speak with him and she adhered to his request unexpectedly.
The woman was annoyed by a continuous ringing on her doorbell where she found a man trying to sell his cleaning services in a manipulative way. “To my great displeasure, there was a man at my door who wanted to talk about the state of the gutters and how desperately they needed to be cleaned. How convenient was it that this man was willing to do the vile job of cleaning the gutters for $250?” she explained. “It should be noted that I lived in a rowhome at the time and had one eavestrough that went across the edge of the roof connecting all the units and one downspout,” she added.
The woman kindly declined his offer but the sexist salesperson kept pestering her with his unusual and unnecessary selling tricks. When nothing worked, he demanded he speak with the “man of the house.” The woman had not disclosed that she was a widow and decided to take advantage of the same. “I leaned back into the house and called my husband’s name. ‘Mark! There’s a guy at the door! Wants to talk about cleaning our gutters!’ I shouted,” she recalled. “My spouse obviously did not respond,” she remarked. She kept up the charade and began to call her husband even louder. When there was still no response, the woman excused herself so she could “go upstairs and call the ‘man of the house.’”
“As promised, I did run upstairs and grab Mark. I returned to the front door lamenting out loud to Mark how frustrating it is when he doesn’t respond to me calling for him and I hate it when he gives me the silent treatment,” she wrote. The woman had grabbed the ashes of her husband that had been in an urn by her bedside and presented the same to the salesman to speak to. “‘Here’s the man of the house!’ I exclaimed, holding the urn up like a gameshow prize. I continued my lament to the salesman. ‘He’s the strong, silent type,’ I concluded to the now silent, bug-eyed salesman,” she recalled.
The woman added to the show by wailing about her life. These were an earnest attempt to make the “sexist salesman” uncomfortable. With all the “ugly crying and snot sobbing,” the salesman “made a dash,” completely dumbfounded and baffled by what he had just witnessed. "It was cathartic for me to release those pent-up emotions. Sometimes I still laugh about it with Mark. I know he definitely would be howling with laughter as he was always quite a jokester," the woman concluded. People in the comments section had amusing reaction to the whole incident. u/fergie89 wrote, “I am so sorry for your loss. You handled this like a pro.” u/hamjim added, “I’m really impressed that you got some catharsis out of putting the sales twat in his place!”