I was walking into a liquor store while on my way home from work to pick up a few things for a party. I have an office job so although I was wearing a dress, it was a very conservative cut with a high neck-line, lengthy hem, and all that jazz (to be clear, what I was wearing shouldn’t have any effect on anyone’s treatment of me, but I just want to set the stage). As I entered the store, there was a stack of shopping baskets just to the left of the door and since there were only a few baskets on the stack I had to bend over to pick one up.
I was definitely not sticking my ass out in any way, just bending at the waist so I could reach my basket, and yet this random middle aged man who was coming in the door behind me felt it completely appropriate to loudly yell “Would you look at that ass! Just makes you wanna smack it! Bam!”
Needless to say, I was not impressed. I immediately stood up and turned to face him. He had a huge grin on his face like he was expecting a high-five for his “joke” and looked blind-sided when I scowled at him and asked “Are you f*cking serious?”
This was obviously a rhetorical question and I wasn’t going to waste any of my day getting into it with him so I just took my basket and went on my way. He couldn’t let it drop at that point though and instead started making some comment about me “giving him a smile, it was just a joke” or something along those lines. I just ignored it as I couldn’t be bothered to address him.
“Whaaaat – can’t you even take a joke?” He said loudly as he followed me through the store.
Realizing he was going to keep pestering me until I did something, I stopped, turned to face him and very bluntly said, “Look buddy, just f*ck off.” This time he looked appropriately abashed and drifted off to some other corner of the store.
No one else in the store, neither the customers nor the staff, had a single thing to say either. As I’m used to standing up for myself, that didn’t bother me, what bothered me was this guy’s total shock at my response. He clearly was used to saying this kind of nonsense to women and getting away with it, either because the women were too shocked or too scared to call him out on his sexist crap. The sense of entitlement was just disgusting.
No one should have to put up with this derogatory behaviour in this day and age.