I swear to god, I thought this was an Onion story at first:
A waitress was barred from working at the Hooters restaurant in Davenport after a violent physical attack left her bruised and unable to meet company standards for maintaining a "glamorous appearance."
The waitress alleges she was fired after taking time off to recover from the assault. Hooters officials say...the woman's bruised body made her temporarily ineligible to work as a "Hooters Girl."
I'm trying to stick to the rules on diary content and fair use, but there's almost no section of the actual article that doesn't make my jaw drop:
Dye was the victim of several incidents of domestic violence in 2008, the last of which occurred Sept. 3 after she left work for the day. Dye, who lives in Rock Island, Ill., was badly beaten and her assailant - unidentified at the hearing - cut off some of her hair.
...General Manager Gina Sheedy testified that..."She probably would not be able to work because of her black eye and the bruises on her face. ... Our handbook states you have to have a glamorous appearance. It doesn't actually say, 'Bruises on your face are not allowed.' It does talk about the all-American cheerleader look."
...
"She told me that she was very badly beaten, she (had been) unconscious, she was in the hospital," Duvall said. "She was like, 'I really want to work next week. ...' I said, 'You need to come in and speak to Gina and let her see your appearance.'"
...
Duvall said that according to the company handbook, a waitress's hair "needs to be styled as if you're going out on a big date on a Saturday night, as if you're preparing for a photo shoot."
OK, aside from the obvious outrages at play here, the one thing which I find most disturbing is, as one comment puts it at the Register, the way that the official Hooters corporate manual is written like "a note written by an 8th grade girl passed to her friend on the way to study hall."
Who exactly is the judge of how a woman "going out on a big date" should style her hair?
Look, I was in retail management for 8 years (movie theaters), and I know the rules--any job in which being the "public face" of the company is a part means that the employer has pretty wide leeway in terms of hiring practices, as long as you're not discriminating on the basis of race, religion, etc. When I hired a concessionist, if they had pink & purple hair at the interview, for example, and I hired them anyway, I couldn't fire them for having funky-colored hair. On the other hand, if their hair was "traditional" when hired, and they colored it pink & purple, or got a mohawk, or whatever at a later date, it's my understanding that I had the right to fire them for the change in appearance (assuming they refused to change it back, that is).
Now, I never did fire anyone for that sort of thing; to me, as long as they can perform the job properly, don't steal, are polite to the customers, etc, I really didn't give a shit what they looked like beyond hygenic and safety reasons (piercings and jewelry were a different matter, for instance--employers have the right to demand that employees remove earrings if they were at risk of falling in the popcorn, or any jewelry that might get caught in equipment, etc).
Yes, I realize that a supermodel that gets her face mangled in a car accident probably can kiss her career goodbye, and obviously Hooters waitresses aren't hired exclusively for their ability to memorize orders and deliver food quickly and accurately.
HOWEVER...this story is just sick and wrong. Thankfully the court ruled in favor of the waitress, but how fucking crass and insensitive was this management team to actually FIRE the poor woman for the crime of getting the shit beaten out of her??
Jesus, couldn't they at least have transferred her to a behind-the-counter/back kitchen duty for a few weeks or something?
Yeesh.
Here's a better-written analysis with a much catchier title than mine:
Hooters Fires Physically-Abused Waitress For Not Looking Hot Enough