fuck-customers:

I work for a rather large company that is well known worldwide.  Think gloved mouse.  We sell these annoying bubble wands, that pretty much all of us hate, but they’re huge cash cows for the company.  They used to come in three varieties, a light blue mermaid one, a darker blue with the yellow fish from mermaid movie, and red gloved mouse one.  Lately, we’ve only been getting the mermaid and gloved mouse ones.  Typically, we sell out of the gloved mouse ones quickly, because they appeal to all genders, and I get a lot of people angry with me because we don’t have the “boy” bubble wands.

Seriously.  I’ve seen parents pull their screaming two-year-old boys away from the mermaid bubble wands because, “It’s for girls, you’re not a girl!”  Hence why so many of us hate these things.  And I mean, whatever, call me progressive, but if it lights up and blows bubbles, does it matter if there is a princess on it or not?

It’s not just us that this bothers.  No, I’ve seen this hurt people firsthand.  For example, I had a nine-year-old boy in front of me, who had just told me how he had been looking everywhere for this, to spend his own money on it, and how much he loved the Little Mermaid.  I wasn’t done interacting with him when these two older women came up and started interrupting me.  "Miss!  Miss!  Do you have the BOY bubble wand?“  I ignored them and kept talking to the boy in front of me.  They got louder.  "Ma'am!  I’m looking for the BOY bubbles.”  I continued ignoring them (Partially out of spite, but I was literally in the middle of a transaction…), and they got louder again.  "EXCUSE ME!“  I took a breath and turned to face them, fake smile plastered on.  "Do you have the boy bubble wand?”

Because I refuse to gender them, I shook my head and replied, “no, sorry, we are out of both the gloved mouse wand and the yellow fish wand.”  I then turned back to the guest in front of me.  These women launched into a tirade about how we never have anything in the park for boys, how they couldn’t in any good conscious get their grandson a princess bubble wand, how no little boys would want it, how much money we must lose, and so on.  Meanwhile, the little boy in front of me, buying the mermaid bubble wand for himself was visibly shrinking.

The moral of the story is, don’t gender toys, it does more harm than good.