Posted on 06/28/2006 11:56:16 AM PDT by RWR8189
You've probably heard of Hooters -- the restaurant chain known for attracting male customers by hiring waitresses who are well-endowed and dressed to show it.
The firm now employs more than 30,000 people. Some would consider this a success story, but our government didn't. Not because Hooters is using sex to sell -- but because its waitresses are -- get ready -- women!
"Discrimination!" cried the federal government's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
The business of Hooters is food, said the government, and "no physical trait unique to women is required to serve food." EEOC lawyers demanded Hooters produce all its hiring data, and then grilled Hooters for four years. Mike McNeil, Hooters' vice president of marketing, told "20/20" the EEOC bureaucrats demanded to look at reams of paperwork. "Employee manuals, training manuals, marketing manuals -- virtually everything that's involved in how we run our business . . . "
The EEOC then issued a set of demands. First, it defined a class of disappointed males who had not been hired by the company. The EEOC said, according to McNeil: "We want you to establish a $22-million fund for this mythical 'class' of dissuaded male applicants. We want you to conduct sensitivity training studies to teach all of your employees to be more sensitive to the needs of men."
I suspect Hooters' customers are mostly men who think the firm is quite sensitive to their needs, thank you -- and that there would indeed be a class of disappointed males if the government insisted men do the jobs of Hooters girls.
Typically, companies assaulted by EEOC lawyers just pay up to avoid ruinous legal fees, but Hooters fought back, cleverly, not just in court, but in the court of public opinion. Hooters waitresses marched on Washington, chanting, "Save our jobs." A burly Hooters manager dressed as a Hooters waitress posed for cameras, beard and all, demonstrating what a "Hooters Guy" might look like.
That was a hoot, and it may have worked. Lawyers representing male applicants accepted an out-of-court settlement of $3.75 million, a fraction of the $22 million that had been demanded. The EEOC dropped its demands for sensitivity training; Hooters agreed to create more jobs like busboys and managers, which didn't have to be performed by women.
Sears found itself in the EEOC's cross hairs because more men than women held jobs selling things like lawn mowers and appliances. The disparate numbers themselves were proof, said the government, that Sears discriminated against women.
Sears denied discriminatiing: "We asked women to do those jobs. It's just that few women want to sell things like lawn mowers."
Is that too politically incorrect a concept for government lawyers to get? Men and women do have different interests. Go to any Wal-Mart and you'll see women looking at clothes, men in the hardware department. There are exceptions, of course, but the sexes do tend to have different interests.
More men selling lawn mowers and more women selling cosmetics does not imply evil discrimination that requires armies of lawyers from the State. Show me women who want to sell lawn mowers but are being required to sell cosmetics instead -- or men who want to sell cosmetics but have to sell lawn mowers -- and we have grounds for discussion. But if the women choose the cosmetics counter, any discrimination is their own.
The EEOC was unable to produce any women who would complain that they'd been discriminated against, so Sears finally won the suit. The $20 million the litigation cost was passed on to us customers.
Have these and other EEOC excesses embarrassed the government into shrinking the EEOC? Of course not. It now has 2,400 employees, and spent $326.8 million in 2005 -- millions more than the year before. Government keeps growing, and as it grows, it feeds on our money, erodes our freedom and defies our common sense.
what a ridiculous waste!
You would, wouldn't you?
That should be engraved in stone..under Ronald Reagan's visage on Mount Rushmore.
Will they have an Ugly Women class action group too?
How about Dwarfs? Lesbian dwarfs (it's a small class of 2).
No reason for that.
I have eaten plenty of times at Hooters. Never, ever, have their employees been insensitive to my needs :)
What ever happened to the right of free association?
Hooters serves food??
We want you to conduct sensitivity training studies to teach all of your employees to be more sensitive to the needs of men."
Decent food and large breasted women.
I'd say they are very sensitive to the needs of men.
Next thing you know, they'll be a discrimination suit on the Doll House with not so younger, not so attractive, not so well-figured, not so friendly, insanely jealous left-wing femi-Nazis as the plaintiffs.
That was worth repeating!
I don't go to Hooters for the chicken wings --- I go for the breasts. ;~))
Been there twice. Both times worst burger I have ever had. It's hard to make a bad hamburger. Hooters does it well!
It's not unheard of, after all, look at Tammy Fay Bakker!
"Lawyers representing male applicants accepted an out-of-court settlement of $3.75 million, a fraction of the $22 million that had been demanded. "
So Hotters had to pay almost four million bucks to settle a BS lawsuit, and this is considered a victory?
They're already sensitive to my needs. That's why I go there.
It occurred to me that there might be employment discrimination within the EEOC itself. After all, despite the dumbing down of our population over the last 50 years, it seems inconceivable that you could have 2,399 sniveling, neuronically-challenged, de-sexed horse's butts and only 1 normal person (the night janitor). Perhaps a lawsuit against the EEOC by a bunch of typical bureaucratic types - you know, the bored-with-life, pencil-necked geeks and the lard-assed, whiney buttinskis - would produce some real results.
Better yet, let's just defund everything except the Department of Defense and NASA, and save lots of money and trouble. The unemployed EEOC bureaucrats can go to Iraq and the various Crapholeistans in the region and file suits there, while the rest of the bureaucrats will be stunningly more productive sitting at home collecting welfare and food stamps.
Actually, feminists believe the only purpose of the female breast is to nurture the infant (begotten by a turkey baster).
To regard the female bosom as an object of erotic interest by the opposite sex is the worst form of sexism to these people.
Good Lord! Now they're attacking HOOTER'S?
For discrimination?
I guess this is what we get when nanny-state gets to much power. And we can expect much more.
When are people gonna wake the hell up?
ROTFLOL! Some people ARE clueless.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.