Hostile can mean, in its most benign grammatical form, "unfriendly", "unfavorable", "resisted", etc.
And yes, hostility and sexism from GW employees is hardly unheard of. I know women who've had GW employees ask, for example, if they're buying the models for their boyfriend. I've been ignored by some employees while I was attempting to buy models before, when the same employee would stop and drop everything they were doing to sell something to a guy.