setting feminism back 20 years

So, last night Panda noticed a lot of her lights and outlets were not working, so she rightly thought to look at the fuse box. We both looked at it and determined that a fuse had been blown. This afternoon when our friendly handyman came to look at it, he told me that the fuse was not blown, but that we simply need to make sure that we flip the switch totally off before trying to flip it back on. I felt pretty dumb, and trying to explain that we had flipped the switch to no avail seemed pointless & unbelievable.

This reminds me of when I worked in a Wal-mart's tire and lube. Yes, I said tire and lube (and yes, I said Wal-mart). I worked out front - I helped people use the computer that tells them what kind of battery they need, and helped them locate various other car things. I also ran the register for the oil changes, etc.
Each day, without fail, This would happen:

Older Gentleman: I need to speak to one of the men in back.
Me: They are currently busy, is there something I can help you with?
O.G.: I'd rather talk to one of the men, but thanks sweetie.
Me: I can try to answer your question, and if I can't, we'll get one of the guys from the back. What do you need?
O.G.: I need some turtle wax.
Me: Here you go.

I'm not kidding, this happened daily! Unfortunately, it would also sometimes happen that the older gentleman would have a actual question regarding cars that I couldn't answer. The conversation would go much like the one above but instead of asking for turtle wax, he'd ask something about alternators & I would have to get one of the guys from the back. I hated this even more because it was as if I proved that little girls don't know anything about cars, when in fact it was just that THIS girl knows nothing about cars!

I never understood why Big Ed hired me for that job - I told him straight out that the only thing I knew about cars was how to put gas in one, but still he hired me.