Specialty Business, Specialty Problems

I could never understand what the big deal was with the Hooters chain. Possibly this stems from the fact that I was raised in Los Angeles and took my undergraduate degree in Santa Barbara, two cities in which one can observe women dressed far more revealingly than any Hooters waitress merely by going to the beach on a sunny day. And while I grasp the concept that many women find the infamous Hooters uniform offensive, the great American custom of voting with one’s feet seems to take care of this situation, in the sense that these women do not patronize Hooters restaurants, and the people (male and female) who do are not those who find the uniform offensive…

In fact, Hooters is hardly the only company that selects its personnel in accordance with a specific image; one can find similar (if less blatant) examples throughout the service and retail sectors. Many jobs actually have much more extensive physical requirements than those placed on the Hooters wait staff, who are, after all, only required to maintain a “glamorous appearance,” whatever that means. Specialty job functions may place requirements on the height, weight, girth, age, or physical abilities of the employees selected for those jobs, and no one seems to mind. Unfortunately, specialty businesses that require the services of specialty personnel experience a series of problems that will never occur in a mainstream firm…

There is a case being reported in The Des Moines Register this week that illustrates the point rather well. It seems that a waitress at the Hooters in Davenport was unable to report for duty after a domestic violence incident that left her temporarily unable to present a “glamorous appearance,” whatever that means. The waitress wasn’t fired or even laid off; she was just told that she wouldn’t be put back on the work schedule until her injuries healed. Unfortunately, the waitress was unable to just go without pay for several weeks, and had to file for unemployment – which left the company in a really unpleasant situation…

If they refused to pony up their share of the unemployment benefits the waitress would receive, they ran the risk of being lambasted in the media, mocked by bloggers and Fark readers, and sued for any number of discriminatory offenses, real and imagined. But if they paid the claim to someone who had not, actually been fired they ran a very real risk of having to pay those same benefits to anyone who quit their jobs, or being lambasted and sued for quite real discriminatory practices (e.g. providing benefits to attractive women, but not other employees who might have chosen to quit for other reasons)…

Now, I know some of you are saying “It’s their own fault; they chose to have this idiotic dress code for their servers, they can live with the consequences!” And, in fact, you’re quite right. If Hooters hired people based entirely upon their abilities as servers and dressed them in, say, white long-sleeved shirts and black trousers, the waitress in our story could have been back on the job as soon as she was well enough to stand up. It is only because they have chosen to occupy a specialized business niche and provide a specialized version of casual dining with specialty personnel that they are experiencing this monetary expense and public relations nightmare. The point here is that, sooner or later, every specialty business is going to face a similar or identical problem…

Maybe a business that needs very tall people will have to deal with injuries sustained on the overhead fans; maybe a business that requires very small people will be sued by someone who was pulled off a roof while trying to pull something up on a rope; maybe a business that requires people with exceptional senses of smell will be sued for using the wrong brand of disinfectant in the restrooms. Unless your workforce is an exact cross-section of the people who live in your community, your business will have this same problem, albeit in a less cosmetic sense, sooner or later…

How are you going to deal with it?