English m*f* do you speak it?

In a store in Paramus, NJ, USA, in 2011 AD, I go up to the counter. Dude looks at me with undisguised disgust and pointedly moves away so as not to have to help me. Smiley woman comes forward, casts puzzled looks between him and me, and offers to help me. I answer. She turns to dude and says, lightly, gaily, "Hey, ---, why didn't you help her?" Maintaining his 3/4-turned-away stance and not deigning to make eye contact with either of us, he responds, "I didn't think she spoke English," and strides away.

I'm not ignorant of how relatively easily my Categories get off in this regard, or indeed of the advantages they sometimes afford me. But this reminded me of Franzen's typically perfect phrase for this kind of thing (in breathtaking cadenza-style riff from within pov of a woman reflecting on consequences of *not* being a member of "the default gender"): "countless petty indignities" (Strong Motion). I suppose as long as we keep insisting on arriving on the planet in visibly different flavors, this kinda stuff will persist, though, I can only hope, ever more fringily (such hope being immediately justified in this case by the woman's bafflement/eventual plain embarrassment at her colleague's behavior). Also enjoying the opportunity to appreciate the (relative) lack of this kind of crap where I live.