Hiring Methods of Retail Stores Today
Rustom Kazak 8/30/13 English 12A/ EWRC
Timed Write #1 In today's competitive retail environment, methods of “capturing consumers awareness of your brand” have drastically changed to become almost illegal. Retailers are now defending the practice of only hiring good looking workers to portray a certain image they think their customers are looking for. Some of these companies are skirting the edges of antidiscrimination laws and provoking a wave of private and government lawsuits. Hiring people by their physical appearance alone is not necessarily illegal but can run into problems of race discrimination, national origin discrimination, gender discrimination, age discrimination, and even disability discrimination. This practice is neither legal or moral. Employers should be focusing on hiring people that can get the job done. Hiring by looks might guarantee that people will come into the store but does not mean that the employees are capable of actually doing their job. Stephen J. Roppolo, a New Orleans lawyer who represents many hotels and restaurants, said " I tell employers that their main focus needs to be on hiring somebody who can get the job done." Hiring based on merit alone is the moral and legal thing to do. Some chains, most noticeably Gap and Benetton pride themselves on hiring attractive people from many backgrounds and races. Abercrombie's “classic American look, pervasive in its store and catalogs, is blond, blueeyed, and preppy. They find
individuals like this by concentrating their hiring on certain colleges and fraternities/sororities. The company says it doesn’t discriminate but a lawsuit filed in San Francisco said otherwise. Several plaintiffs said in interviews that when they applied to be in the “front” of the store (i.e Clerks) they were directed toward the back of the store. “If you see an attractive person working in the store wearing an Abercrombie clothes, it makes you want to wear it, too,” said Matthew Sheehy, a high school
Timed Write #1 In today's competitive retail environment, methods of “capturing consumers awareness of your brand” have drastically changed to become almost illegal. Retailers are now defending the practice of only hiring good looking workers to portray a certain image they think their customers are looking for. Some of these companies are skirting the edges of antidiscrimination laws and provoking a wave of private and government lawsuits. Hiring people by their physical appearance alone is not necessarily illegal but can run into problems of race discrimination, national origin discrimination, gender discrimination, age discrimination, and even disability discrimination. This practice is neither legal or moral. Employers should be focusing on hiring people that can get the job done. Hiring by looks might guarantee that people will come into the store but does not mean that the employees are capable of actually doing their job. Stephen J. Roppolo, a New Orleans lawyer who represents many hotels and restaurants, said " I tell employers that their main focus needs to be on hiring somebody who can get the job done." Hiring based on merit alone is the moral and legal thing to do. Some chains, most noticeably Gap and Benetton pride themselves on hiring attractive people from many backgrounds and races. Abercrombie's “classic American look, pervasive in its store and catalogs, is blond, blueeyed, and preppy. They find
individuals like this by concentrating their hiring on certain colleges and fraternities/sororities. The company says it doesn’t discriminate but a lawsuit filed in San Francisco said otherwise. Several plaintiffs said in interviews that when they applied to be in the “front” of the store (i.e Clerks) they were directed toward the back of the store. “If you see an attractive person working in the store wearing an Abercrombie clothes, it makes you want to wear it, too,” said Matthew Sheehy, a high school