Dear Unleashed by PETCO:
Hey, my wife and I are fans, and shop y’all exclusively. Perhaps you can imagine our shock tonight when I answered a call from a man at Legg Research (or something like that) calling me on your behalf. I answered and he said, “Is this the male of the household, sir?”
I said, “What? Did you just ask for the male of the household?” He answered affirmatively.
Petco, it is 2014. There are a great many households without a “male.” Lesbian, single, military wives, or otherwise. I mean, come on! My wife and I were absolutely shocked.
You need to instruct your research group to change their script immediately. Oh, and you can apologize to me – a formerly loyal customer – if you want to keep my business.
It’s not at all Butch to assume there’s a male in each household. Be Butch.
Hi Butch
And I thought Petco was a fairly current outfit. Yikes! Here is part of an article from the Atlantic Monthly recently on the topic:
“In fact, single moms account for precisely one-quarter of U.S. households. Single dads make up another 6 percent.
In other words, the biggest story here isn’t the rise of female earners, exactly, even though that’s a distinct and powerful trend. This is really a story about a more astonishing fact: Single parents have more than tripled as a share of American households since 1960”.
If you add that up, fully 31% of the houses in America have single parents. Come on Petco, do your research. That took me less than a minute to find out.
PS. I followed your advice and bought Butch a bow tie for Valentines Day! 🙂