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SecretMethod70 · 12-06-2003, 02:54 AM

Now, the discussion of this company is not a new thing to these boards. We have already discussed their use of sex to market to minors - but I don't remember this particular topic being discussed, and I can see an argument for both sides.

The way I see the issue here, it's not really a question of if it happens or not - it does - but, rather, it's an issue of whether or not there is anything wrong with it. Aside for these two former managers speaking out, I had a good friend who applied for a job at Abercrombie & Fitch this past summer. In his interview, he was told to stand up and the manager then proceeded to walk around him checking him out and said something along the lines of "that'll do" and offered him a job. No questions, no discussion at all even, just a look at his appearance. He turned the job down.

Anyways, here's the article. Personally I'm still undecided on whether or not they have the right to do this. It's an interesting subject.

Quote:

The Look Of Abercrombie & Fitch
Dec. 5, 2003

Two ex-managers for a clothing chain accused of discrimination say corporate representatives of the chain, Abercrombie & Fitch, routinely had them reduce the hours of less attractive salespeople.

The two former managers - who say they were hired for their good looks - appear in a Morley Safer report on the trendy retail chain on 60 Minutes, Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Dan Moon and Andrea Mandrick say Abercrombie & Fitch were after a certain "look" for their sales force, and the less a salesperson had of this look, the less they worked.

"I was sick of getting my schedule back every week with lines through names," says Mandrick. "I can't look the people that work for me, that want to be there, in the eye and...lie to them and say 'Oh, we don't have hours,' when, really, it's because they weren't pretty enough."

Moon, a former model, had a similar experience and says his look is what got him a job. "I think it was 90 percent of it and your interaction with other people was 10 percent," he says.

Black conservative radio host and lawyer Larry Elder, who has talked extensively about the accusations on his program, defends the company. "There is a no-fly zone over certain people and certain industries that discriminate all the time," says Elder.

He likens unattractive people's failure to be hired by Abercrombie & Fitch to white people failing to be hired for on-air work by Black Entertainment Television.

"This is about a business deciding, pursuant to its own best interests, rightly or wrongly, that a particular type of salesperson is more likely to generate more dollars," Elder tells Safer.

A group of minorities suing Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't think the retailer has the right to hire based on a look, a look they say too often is mostly white. "[The look] is dominated by Caucasian, football-looking, blond hair, blue-eyed males. Skinny, tall. You don't see any African American, Asian Americans," says Jennifer Lu, an Asian who says she is suing the retailer for firing her and other Asians because management preferred white males.
Abercrombie & Fitch denies these accusations, but would not speak on camera to 60 Minutes. But the two former managers say what they saw was "lookism" rather than racism.

Mandrick and Moon say applications from minorities were handled the same as a white person's. "File it away in the 'yes' pile...to call them back or the 'no pile,'" says Mandrick. The no pile, she says, was for applications of people whose looks she knew wouldn't pass muster.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/...le587099.shtml