I worked at an Abercrombie in college and it was just as exploitative as it sounds. We had to wear Abercrombie-only clothing to work and… you guessed it - they didn’t provide it. We had to buy it. As if that weren’t bad enough, it had to be “in season”, which meant they forced us to buy a new outfit every quarter for the priviledge to work minimum wage retail. They claimed we could choose instead to wear “equivalent” clothing if we didn’t want to pay. I once wore reef leather flip flops and they made me cut the 1cm rubber tags off before letting me on the floor.
They ended up getting sued for this practice and about 10 years later I got a settlement check for $7.
I have plenty of other crazy blood boiling stories from that job.
Sure - so the way they hired was completely discriminatory.
They wanted to hire people based on looks so customers would only see attractive white people working there and maybe one token of each other race. But thats completely illegal. So they got around this by recruiting people on the street.
They’d send someone onto the streets of NYC to walk up to people they wanted and offer them jobs. They’d also list the positions, but would auto-decline anyone who applied. That way they could pick the looks they wanted and show everyone who tried to apply and didn’t “fit” the door.
The managers were also insane. Most had drunk the Kool Aid and were so obsessed with Abercrombie they genuinely believed that being a retail store manager was something exclusive to be proud of. They expected the same attitude from everyone. They would invite employees to drink after work and then note who didn’t wear Abercrombie outside of work, then give them the worst shifts.
They also threatened to fire me multiple times for going off script - saying things like “hi” to customers instead of “hey how’s it going?” One time an exec came in with a suitcase. I was on greeter duty and thought they were a customer so I tried to engage and ask about their travel. They wordlessly stared daggers at me then went straight to the manager to have me fired. No idea why I wasn’t, but they acted like they had just saved my life by letting me keep my crappy retail job.
That was one of those jobs where I didn’t quit, I just stopped showing up.
I worked at an Abercrombie in college and it was just as exploitative as it sounds. We had to wear Abercrombie-only clothing to work and… you guessed it - they didn’t provide it. We had to buy it. As if that weren’t bad enough, it had to be “in season”, which meant they forced us to buy a new outfit every quarter for the priviledge to work minimum wage retail. They claimed we could choose instead to wear “equivalent” clothing if we didn’t want to pay. I once wore reef leather flip flops and they made me cut the 1cm rubber tags off before letting me on the floor.
They ended up getting sued for this practice and about 10 years later I got a settlement check for $7.
I have plenty of other crazy blood boiling stories from that job.
Sure - so the way they hired was completely discriminatory.
They wanted to hire people based on looks so customers would only see attractive white people working there and maybe one token of each other race. But thats completely illegal. So they got around this by recruiting people on the street.
They’d send someone onto the streets of NYC to walk up to people they wanted and offer them jobs. They’d also list the positions, but would auto-decline anyone who applied. That way they could pick the looks they wanted and show everyone who tried to apply and didn’t “fit” the door.
The managers were also insane. Most had drunk the Kool Aid and were so obsessed with Abercrombie they genuinely believed that being a retail store manager was something exclusive to be proud of. They expected the same attitude from everyone. They would invite employees to drink after work and then note who didn’t wear Abercrombie outside of work, then give them the worst shifts.
They also threatened to fire me multiple times for going off script - saying things like “hi” to customers instead of “hey how’s it going?” One time an exec came in with a suitcase. I was on greeter duty and thought they were a customer so I tried to engage and ask about their travel. They wordlessly stared daggers at me then went straight to the manager to have me fired. No idea why I wasn’t, but they acted like they had just saved my life by letting me keep my crappy retail job.
That was one of those jobs where I didn’t quit, I just stopped showing up.
ASK AND HE SHALL DELIVER
So it’s basically a cult. Got it.
👂