In three days time it’ll be Black Friday. A day that we, the UK, have adopted from the US (it’s the day after Thanksgiving) when retailers slash their prices, people fight over heavily discounted goods and, sometimes, even the police get involved. As you can tell, it’s a total barrel.
Turns out it’s also the day that American Apparel encourage their employees to wear a T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Ask Me To Take It All Off’. OK then.
According to Jezebel, an anonymous source who is an AA employee, the brand has ‘started scaling back up towards a sexier image – some aspects of which are making employees feel uncomfortable.’ The aforementioned T-shirt being one example of this.
The employee went on to describe her disgust at the T-shirt: ‘American Apparel is giving my consent to our customers to harass me, if I wear that shirt.’
The T-shirt was offered as an ‘optional’ piece of clothing to employees in US and Canadian stores, but those who didn’t want to wear it were directed to wear a plain black top with a badge saying the same thing, instead.
In an update to the article, a spokesperson for AA gave Jezebel the following statement:
‘This slogan on these tee shirts – which were distributed to both male and female employees as optional – was originally intended to be a play on words to engage customers during our Black Friday Sale, which features an additional 50 per cent off items that are already marked down 50 per cent. We understand that this offended an individual employee who spoke up about his/her concerns.
‘American Apparel is a company that values free speech, and most importantly, creating an environment where employees feel valued, protected, and safe. As such, we have decided to discontinue this slogan and will seek other ways to stay creative and push the envelope, which is part of our brand DNA.’
Which of course, is good news. What’s not so good, however, is that someone thought this was an OK thing to do in the first place. As a rule of thumb, American Apparel, it’s best not to ask your employees to wear merchandise with slogans on them that could encourage sexual harassment. Just a thought.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.