What century is this?

[OneTrack]

Remembering Captain Nichola Goddard.
CTV.ca | Cdn. captain killed in Afghanistan firefight

 

[Cloggy]

My wife used to do interviews for military personel with short term contracts (and at the time, national service) who wanted to go to Servia, that at that time was a combat zone. She had to check that they were stable enough and wanted to do it for the right reasons.
Anyway one time there was a guy who had been refused, but he honestly believed that he could not be refused by a woman, so he refused to sign the required form and demanded to hear it from a man (which only emphasised the fact that this guy was not fit for this duty).
Well it was a Friday afternoon and my wife was one of the last ones to leave, she just wanted to get home and enjoy her weekend. The only other guy around was the security guard, so my wife left the room and asked the security guard to act like her colleage (after removing the obvious parts of his uniform), this time they both entered the room the security guard explained to the candidate that he had not been accepted, the candidate signed the required form and quietly left.

My wife and the security guard often joked about this incident, when someone was sick he would offer to "fill in" for them

Obviously a rapport was later sent to the candidates superiors explaining what had happened.

 

[keira]

Except putting out campfires, of course.
It's all a matter of "conditioning"; it's like the old 60's "riddle" about the surgeon who couldn't operate on a boy because "he is my son, but I'm not his father". The surgeon was, of course, his mother....Back in the 60's, although there were tens of thousands of female surgeons around the world, most people (male and female, btw) still thought of a man when they thought "surgeon", so were baffled by the "riddle".
The biggest clanger I dropped in my job was meeting a Dr. Smith at a Dealership about 15 years ago....I approached the couple and extended my hand to the man and said "Good morning Dr. Smith". His wife icily replied "I'M Dr. Smith". I never made that assumption again.

This is something that has happened to my brother (sort of). He and his new wife moved to Ohio, where she began her doctoral program, and he was a work-from-home graphic designer. Her name got out in the community and so when telemarketers and University officials called their house, they always asked if he was "Mr. Svanoe". He had to explain for about 20 minutes that his wife kept her maiden name because she had a defined career under that name, and he had one with his, so since there was no law that they HAD to change her name, they chose not to, but they still couldn't figure it out.

Just a humorous story that is made way funnier when he tells it.