Taking The Long Route(r)

(I work at the IT office in the city I live in. I’m female. I get a call from a city-funded kindergarten:)

Me: “IT office.”

Kindergarten Teacher: “Hi, we have a problem with the computer here. The Internet isn’t working.”

Me: “I see. Let’s see if there’s a way we can get this fixed over the phone, so you don’t have to wait for me to get to you.”

Kindergarten Teacher: “Look, is there no way you can just send someone over?”

Me: “I’m the person who usually goes out into the field. The reason I’m taking calls right now is that it’s still early in the morning, and no one else has arrived yet. These problems are very often easy to fix, and it would be a shame for you to wait until I got to you, only for me to restart your router, which you could easily do yourself and have Internet within minutes.”

Kindergarten Teacher: “But you don’t understand. We’re all women here, so we don’t know anything about computers. Just send one of the guys out. They’ll be able to fix it.”

(Having no words, I ended the call. The kicker is that I didn’t end up getting to that Kindergarten until hours later. Needless to say that all I did was restart the router, and they had Internet minutes later.)