Hooters Asst Regional Manager Needs Free Gym Membership

May 19th, 2010. By AbiK

Cassie Smith, a waitress at Hooters in Roseville, Michigan—for two years now—was apparently called in for a review and basically told that she needs to take some weight off. Ok, let’s face it, Hooters is all about the eye candy. And I guess they want to get on the “wellness” bandwagon and help out a pudgy (apparently their assessment of Cassie, not mine) gal by offering her a free gym membership—and giving her what sounds like your run-of-the-mill HR-is-now-involved 30-60 day timeframe to slim down.

I’m not sure how Hooters monitors progress on this front—do they have weigh-ins? or is it all based on visual cues? Will Cassie be “ok” when she’s able to get into size XXS vs. the size XS Hooters uniform she wears now? And I wonder what business metrics—like customer retention, revenue increase vs prior month—those kind of measures—will be monitored and considered in direct relation to Cassie shedding those pounds? I muse and I digress…forgive me.

You can see more about this case—what’s basically a weight discrimination case—on the video above. But what I love is the double-standard. Take a look at the picture of this guy at the right, pulled from a WDIV tv (Detroit) report—he’s the Assistant Regional Manager for the Hooters where Cassie works. Now, I don’t like to point fingers or be the pot calling the kettle black, but…I’m hoping Hooters has offered him a nice little gym membership and that he’s taken them up on the offer.

The other interesting thing about this is the Hooters’ company line about image. We’ve now heard from two “head office” Hooters folks: Alexis Aleshire, PR Manager, and Mike McNeil, VP Marketing. They both defend (a given) the company’s stance on image and appearance by pointing to the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and the Radio City Rockettes. Ok, again there is more eye candy. But at least those gals have to DO something—as in something physical. As in they probably should be in decent shape in order to merely perform their jobs. I know, I know—there’s still a “looks” component. But I’m hard-pressed to come up with a correlation—aside from sex appeal—between the cheerleaders and Rockettes who work out, practice and perform together, and the Hooters waitresses who show up for their shift.

Closing thought…if men only like women of a certain mold, who’s frequenting those big and beautiful dating sites? And what—they’re not showing up at Hooters every now and then?

Tags: Cassie Smith, Discrimination, Hooters

This was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Employment . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.