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White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA

The gender challenge

Designing and managing a successful location-based leisure facility can be especially challenging for men, because the decision-makers in choosing where to go are women, and most times, moms in families.

We ran across the following humor we hope will give you a little smile, as well as remind our male readers how different your guests from Venus are from you. To please them and turn them into loyal, repeat guests, you need to get out of your Martian mindset.

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike in English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. "House," for instance, is feminine: "la casa." "Pencil,"' however, is masculine: "el lapiz."'

A student asked, "What gender is 'computer'?"

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide whether "computer"' should be a masculine or a feminine noun.

Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided "computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computer") because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for possible later retrieval.
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine "el computer") because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on.
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves.
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem.
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a newer and better model.

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