Gender biases go both ways

So yesterday I dropped my wife off to get her car at a local Muffler/Brakes/Oil Change specialist franchise. We had just given said franchise lots of money only to find that the brakes on her van squeaked badly so we were returning it for them to switch out the pads. Instead they resurfaced the rotors and explained to my lovely bride that she was "riding her brakes" which is why the return visit was necessary. I watched from the car as this man showed with his foot how this can commonly occur. My wife's driving skills are good if not great. She is much more gentle and caring with a car than I will probably ever be. She understands that driving with two feet is bad, and her feet are too small to inadvertently press the brake while accelerating. Moreover, I have never once seen her try to "burn out" in our Minivan. (Although the thought of seeing her do this is the picture of irony and quite amusing at that!) So needless to say, she was annoyed at being patronized by this franchise manager. (I was too! And as a side note, the brakes are still squeaking so we are returning it again and this time they will switch out the pads like they said they would the last time). This was obviously a gender bias. I doubt very much they would have had the same conversation with me. It was quite frustrating.

So this morning I got up early with the intent of going to the local supermarket to buy my wife a red rose in appreciation for taking care of things while I was gone. She takes care of me and the boys so well, and frankly, the house looked better when I came back than it did when I left. (Perhaps that should tell me something). When I got to the store, it was about 6:20. As you might expect there was not a flood of activity in the florist section so I passed by some guy in the produce section to go to the service center and ask if someone could help me in floral. Half hoping the nice young lady would walk over and help me, she instead got on the speaker and asked for a representative to help me. As I went back to the section, the same guy in produce dropped his melon or whatever he was stocking and came over and helped me! A big burly guy at that! I didn't want him. What on earth does he know about flowers? I don't know which one to pick out. I always expect the nice ladies working there to help me find the right one and dress it nicely and smile at me thinking I'm the most romantic guy in the world while doing so. I expect this because I assume they are surely the receivers of flowers and can choose a good one from a bad one which will in turn provide the biggest smile to my wife's face when I hand her the rose later that morning. Instead, I get some big young guy, who may not even have a girlfriend, yanking out the first rose he sees and wrapping it up like it's 3 pounds of ground sirloin. But hey, I'm not biased.