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Last name causes gender confusion [UPDATED]
Published 9:50am Thursday, February 7, 2013 Updated 11:52am Thursday, February 7, 2013With the last name Linda, I get lots of misdirected mail from businesses confused as to my gender.
I get all the very best of Victoria’s Secret catalogues, as despite my nonordering, they seem determined that I am going to be their very best bra customer. I expect that such is not going to happen, no matter how determined and talented their sales department is. The word “talent” may not be quite appropriate; perhaps “endowed” would be better, as I doubt there are very many men working there.
Maybe there aren’t very many normal women working there, either. I bet their hiring criterion list is a reversal of the one used for a normal college graduate. “C’s” and “D’s” are worth more than “A’s” and “B’s”. Double “D’s”? Sign here. You’re hired.
At the end of a long day, I could admit to needing extra support and uplift, just not the kind they offer.
I wonder if they have engineers on their research and development staff? People who deal with materials stress, deflection analysis, and friction abrasion. What do you do? Answer: Oh, well, I’m a structural engineer. Really? For whom do you work? Answer: Um, mumble, mumble.
It’s a fact that the business of supporting what bra engineers support needs some good engineers.
Darwin would have called Victoria’s Secret survival of the biggest.
I got distracted there for just a bit. This is about the feminine mail I get. Just the other day, I got something in the mail from NOW, the National Organization for Women. They were wondering if I would like to join their organization. I guess it would depend on which committees they would want me to serve on. Probably, judging from the fact they’re sending somebody like me recruiting male (Ooops. Freudian slip, there. Should have been “mail.”), I should likely be the most help at sorting out the people to whom they’re sending mail. Maybe try and keep people like me out.
Really, though, were they to offer me a position, maybe it would be best if I were in their survey department, where I could continue to broadcast my opinions on various gender-specific subjects, like about how really great women have it in this country.
We even let them get jobs, and help with house payments and groceries. You know, it’s a fact that lots of other countries won’t liberate women to that point. Women who come here from other countries remark on how spoiled the women here are, like, they even get to pick their own husbands.
Maybe that’s where I’d be the most valuable to NOW. I could set up a prospective husband review committee for women, to which prospective brides could offer up their future spouse’s attributes and such. Really, that’s not so weird. After all, I’ve been a husband. Who better to tell women whether they’ve got a chance in hell of beating the divorce statistics.
I could help with the great questions of matrimony, the first being who would make a good husband? I’d set initial standards, build a cohort of values to cross reference the assessment process, use really big words.
First and last question to a prospective husband: Do you own either a hunting rifle or a fishing boat? If not, how about a snowmobile, an ATV, or a sculpture built out of empty beer cans?
Too bad.
Next.
