During the same time that I worked at that bakery 30 some-odd years ago, we needed to buy a new mattress. We were living paycheque to paycheque at that time, as we did for many years, so when we found one we wanted to buy we decided to put it on one of those payment plans. We didn’t have the $600 or whatever it was. Now Matt was a freelance theatre technician, and at the time was a venue tech for the Fringe Festival (for those of you not familiar with this it’s a theatre festival that takes place in several major cities across North American and the globe–it originated in Edinburgh. It’s about two weeks of plays and performances in pop-up theatres around the city, and theatre companies often travel from city to city to perform their shows in each festival across the country. They’re pretty amazing festivals).
So like I said Matt was a venue technician which meant he was working crazy hours, while I was working 9–5 in the office. I went to this store to fill in the paperwork for this mattress we were buying, and gave them all my employment info and so forth. Then they said I needed my husband’s signature. Now here’s how my mind worked: to me… my husband and I are a partnership so naturally if we’re buying this thing *together* then it makes sense that we both have to fill out the paperwork. Now like I said Matt’s hours were nuts and it was really tricky to find an hour for him to get away from the theatre, race to this little store to do paperwork, and get back. It was a problem. It was inconvenient. But we managed it, I picked him up we got to the store, he signed the paper and I got him back to work.
Now maybe you’re ahead of me on this. Here is where my brain finally went click and TWO things fell into place: 1) Matt was a freelancer. He didn’t get a regular paycheque. No bank would ever have loaned him 20 bucks, whereas I… was working full time. 2) and here’s the real kicker. Matt walked into the store and signed the paper. They didn’t even ask him for ID. After all that stress of picking up and getting him there, I could have just grabbed some random dude off the street to sign the papers. It didn’t matter who he was. It didn’t matter that I worked full time and he did not, what mattered was that he was a man. My husband. A woman couldn’t put a large purchase on a payment plan without her husband being involved.
My god We were both so pissed off… But we’d already filled out the paperwork, we couldn’t exactly change our minds and take our business elsewhere. We told my mum about it and she was so freakin’ mad she paid the bill for the mattress, so at least they didn’t get any of the interest from the payment plan, and then we paid her back. That was very nice of her.
And I became much more aware of bullshit like that, and don’t let people get away with it. This was 30 years ago, and things are better, but believe me shit like that still happens.