Back in my recent-grad days I worked as a manager for Hollister, Co., a sister store to the infamous Abercrombie & Fitch. My time there made me loathe the retail industry (you can read about real life occurrences here, here and here), and I still get frightening flashbacks when I walk into those stores.
Well A&F is back on the infamous radar today, with some not-so-surprising news that they have forced an employee to work in the stockroom because of her prosthetic arm. Not a joke, as the entire story, told from the girl’s point of view, sings with all the bigotry, sexism, racism, hottism, whatever other -ism you can think of.
The bulk of the story states that the girl was on the floor (the sales floor) during a visit from the visual team. The visual team is a team of former managers who travel to stores around the country/world fixing their mannequins (called “forms”) and other various visual aspects of the store, such as the way in which the stacks of clothes are folded. This is a big deal in AF-Land, and usually happens if your store is a disaster OR if you’re being visited by “corporate,” or even Mike Fucking Jeffries himself.
So Riam, who has a prosthetic arm, should’ve quit after they made her wear a cardigan to cover up her arm. The luring attractiveness of being one of the “elite” who are hired at AF must have kept her there (sarcasm). During the visual team’s visit, she was approached about the cardigan and asked to remove it. This was because each season, the employees are given a specific list of things that they are allowed to wear while at work. It usually revolves around jeans and the colors navy/white, and since it’s summer I would assume it included layered tank tops placed ever-so-strategically to show off the moose/seagull logo.
Riam refuses to remove the cardigan (why, I have no idea, let your prosthetic arm fly) and since she’s not wearing one of the pre-approved outfits, she’s sent to the stockroom, which is where all the ugly people work. You rarely see the trolls of AF, because they’re kept under the harsh, flourecent lighting of this stockroom.
After she calls home office (customer service, sorta), they ask her if she can stay in the stock room until the season change. Insane! And that sounds exactly like the company’s weird ass rules, so they haven’t changed a bit.
I can attest that things like this, though not to this insane degree, happened often when I was at the company. If you’re still looking for reasons to hate this company, there you have it.
