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22 responses total.

  No comment.

Was the "grubbiest, stupidest-looking male mechanic" in on 
the joke or was he being exploited as a stereotype by the
female manager?

I assumed all, except the clueless customer, were in on the act.  I think its
a great idea to try and nchange behavior (and hopefully an attitude) without
lecturing. 

This response has been erased.

Well, if the customer would've been in it, the fun would have been
taken out of it.
Men can be so short sighted.

*All* people can be short sighted.

I'm anxiously waiting for otter to post her story in here.  =)

Otter is too busy laughing to post much of anything right now!!
Thanks, Valerie, that is delicious!

I think that's positively hilarious!  I've heard of that happening in places
a time or two, also.  Works like a charm.

People are always asking me technical questions about stereos and computers
at the Kiwanis sale.  I am the only female volunteering in our dept. 
Sometimes I have to explain to them that the men know more than I do about
computers, as I have no training.  I think attitudes have changed a lot.  The
customers also assume I know something and share their knowledge of
electronics with me.  I have done some background reading so I can keep up
with what they assume I will understand about VCRs and fax machines.
Women are now expected to be competent dentists and lawyers and computer
programmers, I don't know whether there are many female computer hardware
specialists yet.  Or copier repairwomen.

Well, my roommate was a computer tech for a couple of years (now she's in
sales).  Frequently she would answer the tech phone and the people would
ask to speck to a technician, she would calmly answer that she was one and
they would say things like "No, not the secretary, a technician" or "No, I
want to talk to a REAL technician." Apparently she wasn't a real tech because
she was female.  She even had a customer refuse to pay (initially) because
he found out the person that fixed his machine was female... so I don't
know how far I would carry the thinking in #10, it would be nice if that's
how it was, but it doesn't look like it to me.

I always ask when someone answers the phone if they are the person I should
be asking questions of.  Often the first person just answers the phone, and
for some reason this sort of person is usually a woman, so maybe people go
on statistics?  I have had good advice from women at computer repair places,
and bad advice from men.

If I'm calling the main phone number for a company, I generally assume that
whoever answers the phone is likely not to be the person I need to talk to,
but if they tell me that they are I won't argue with them about it.  That goes
for whether they're male or female.

The computer industry tends to be pretty male dominated, and because of the
sort of prejudice Anne was talking about, I get the impression that it's
probably an industry where it's a lot easier for men to get jobs than women.
It's also not something women are nearly as likely to get pushed towards by
peer pressure or whatever as men are.  Therefore, when I encounter a woman
in the computer industry, I generally assume she probably knows more than her
male counterparts, in order to get to the same position.

I've noticed that attitude a lot.  I imagine movies and TV contribute to it
a lot as well: the girl in the sports movie who can play twice as well as any
guy on the team, the incredibly talented woman who supports herself with a
back-breaking industrial job, etc.  People who complain about stereotyping
in movies seem not to have picked up on this one, but if you see a character
with a hat or helmet on do something competent in the first few scenes of a
movie, it's a sure bet that the next shot will be of her (surprise suprise)
pulling her hat off and revealing her long gorgeous shampoo-commercial hair.

I know of people who prefer to have a male server wait on them in 
restaurants than a female. (And it's women who prefer this). They say 
they get more courtesy and better service all around with a male server. 

There is a waitress at Outback restaurant in West
Bloomfield who looks exactly like Drew Barrymore.

Yowza!!

So, Michael, how do servers in West Bloomfield who look like Drew Barrymore
rate on the courtesy-and-better-service scale? <g>

Re resp:16 - I wonder if that's the same person as the waitress at the
Sidetrack Cafe in Ypsilanti who looks like Drew Barrymore.

Re #18: Who cares?  ;-)  Actually, she's an excellent
waitperson, plus she has the same sort of benevolent 
glow that seems to radiate from inside her famous 
lookalike, which I think is part of the illusion.

R #19: Could be.  When my wife asked her if anyone
had ever told her that she looks like Drew Barrymore,
she said she hears it all the time, and in fact used to
be stopped and asked for her autograph when she 
was in California.

I wonder what she thought of that.

My aunt used to be mistaken for Zsa Zsa Gabor. The hairstyle matches 
exactly. 

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