ehhh…much as I hate A&F, I hate the idea using homeless people as a tool to make A&F look bad via “guilt-by-association” even more.
Homeless people have it hard enough without people trying to take advantage of their current low social status. (the status people really should be trying to fix.)
My little brother fell far from the apple tree. He has worked at A&F and Hollister for a while. My understanding from him is that everyone who works out front is hired on a modeling contract. That means that they can basically fire you for not looking to their inane standards, so I am surprised that the court went the way they did. Personally, I think that they should be able to do whatever gets their rocks off. If you are devout enough to never take your insert religious symbol here off, why on earth are you working for A&F? This is like working for hooters and being upset that you can’t wear a sweatshirt to work.
Stupid kids are buying these stupid shirts that say dumb crap like insert company name here Track and Field. How incredibly dumb do you have to be to pay extra to sell your chest space as advertising space for what sounds like a shitty corporate intramural league? There is no saving these people. If A&F doesn’t separate these idiots from their cash, I can only assume that someone else would have.
Nah, I have no hate for A&F. They do the world a service by marking dull and stupid people with their corporate logo. A&F kind of reminds me of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. People go to New Orleans and hit up a street like Frenchmen street and realize how wonderful the place is and heap scorn on the drunken fratfest that is Bourbon Street. I think people have it all wrong. Bourbon Street is a giant douchebag magnet that ensure that shitty boring people stay out of the rest of New Orleans, thus ensuring the rest of the city is awesome. A&F is similar. A&F draws in dull morons, charges them double to act as walking corporate board boards, and makes them easy to avoid by everyone else.
Neckbeards, the obese, and the tattooed are not protected classes. Furthermore, anti-discrimination laws require employers to make “reasonable accomodation.” If your job is to portray Snow White a lot of accomodations would be unreasonable where they would be reasonable if the job is to wear a Mickey costume. Similarly, if your job involves walking around the park in costume and climbing onto parade floats, there’s no reasonable way to accomodate a wheelchair, but if your job is to watch security cameras or answer phones, it’s reasonable to require a ramp at the office entrance.
Blockquote[quote=“Rindan, post:22, topic:9346”]
If you are devout enough to never take your insert religious symbol here off, why on earth are you working for A&F? This is like working for hooters and being upset that you can’t wear a sweatshirt to work.
[/quote]
Some of us need to work. How far does your logic extend, anyway? If you don’t want your boss to proposition you, why work at American Apparel? If you have a family to support, why work at Wal-Mart? If you like to urinate when your bladder is full, why work at Foxconn?
Actually, seeing an A&F piece of clothing is a useful clue that the wearer is not a Happy Mutant and lets me save time by not bothering to engage them in useful conversation. Buying their crap is their way of saying that the buyer no desire to be interesting, only to be cool as others define cool. Giving their stuff to thrift stores would muddy that up.
I doubt much of their stuff would end up at a thrift store, as it doesn’t seem to be very durable anyway.
Please explain exactly why you think this is a bad move on their part. I’m genuinely interested in your personal opinion.
A&F call their employees “models” and, as with Disney, use that to circumvent much of employment discrimination legislation.
If you want a secular parallel, I’d think of it like a tattoo. Sometimes I can guess at a reason for a tattoo, sometimes not, sometimes I like how they look, sometimes not. It may be a reference I don’t quite get to their family/friends/culture. But fundamentally, it’s none of my business. They’re not making me get tattooed. It’s something that person finds that makes them comfortable and literally, happier in their own skin. Why should anyone else care?
“Assless chaps”? Where do I apply?
Certainly in the Europe employers are allowed “discriminate” for “theatrical” reasons. so if you run a Chinese Restaurant, you can employ serving staff based on their ability to pass for Chinese. I assume that, if you run a preppy WASP shop, you can chose to employ people who can pass for preppy WASPs. However, to employ someone and then sack them for not matching your corporate image seems a bit rich.
There was this recent excellent blog post addressing the issue of a female non-Japanese chef in a sushi restaurant. This was the business supporting their employee.
They’re just trying to copy France as usual. The difference is that France has a strong culture of public secularism, and Quebec is still part of Canada, no matter how much they wish otherwise.
I’d shop there.
Nice 
thanks for that positive link
Hollister Co. is ostensibly named after Hollister Ranch, a prime surfing spot in Santa Barbara County. Both that ranch and the land in San Benito County that eventually became the city of Hollister were owned by and named after the same person, William Welles Hollister.
Mind you, the pseudo-history the company cooked up about surfing starting at the ranch in the 1920’s is nonsense.
Wherever one or more is gathered in the name of Emperor Joshua Norton I, there my assless chaps store abides. Sadly, the pay is shit.
Reading this made me wish I was rich so I could buy a ton of their clothes and give them to homeless people everywhere.
As someone who wears certain religious related apparel on a daily basis, I agree with you but understand @Rindan here as well.
I work a “business clothes” job so I can keep my tzitzit tucked in my pants and only put on my yarmulke when I sneak off for afternoon prayers. I’m not in the US so I dont expect to be accommodated for these things. Where I am I cant expect it any more than a Hooters waitress can expect to work in a sweatshirt.
**“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” - Mark Twain **
But seriously, you seem to be saying if someone is wearing the right uniform of a Happy Mutant they are worth talking to and the wrong uniform earns your contempt?
Clothes signal. Now, the signal might be as boring as, “yup, put generic clothing on today”, in which case there is not much to read into it. The signal might be blatant like someone dressed in full Harley Davidson gear, a business suit, or a green two foot tall mohawk. If you have a big “insert corporate logo here track and field, 98” shirt you are signaling. Now, I personally take the signal to mean that you are not terribly introspective and have not thought about how inane it is to be wearing what looks like some sort of shitty clothing companies intramural sports league shirt; dull, because you have thought about it and decided it is wicked cool to use your chest as advertising space for a clothing company; or you might have grabbed it has a hand-me-down from a sibling/friend/whatever and don’t give a shit.
You shouldn’t be close minded. It really might just be a hand-me-down and you are looking at an interesting person who just doesn’t give a shit, or it could be someone who is a bit shallow when it comes to clothes shopping, but is an otherwise interesting human. However, I think you are forgiven if you ram people through a first pass filter and start to weigh the probability that you are going to have an interesting interaction with someone. Someone on the train with a gas mask and EL wire snaking around their body is a bit more likely to be a Happy Mutant than a dude paying for the privilege to use his chest as a billboard to advertise for Abercrombie and Fitch corporation’s imaginary track and field team.
