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.
The failure of a bureaucracy to perform needed functions has no effect on its existence. Bureaucracy exists to serve itself. The first rule of bureaucracy is self perpetuation. This simple principle goes to the heart of any attempts to limit government. Under the limited government discipline of George W the size and scope of government has grown and grown substantially.
Fairtax proponents argue that substituting a federal sales tax for a federal income tax will reduce the size of government and get the government out of our pockets.
Nonsense.
The bureaucrats who run the IRS will not lose their jobs. They will simply seek and find other ways to impose their confiscatory policies on the public. In point of fact the IRS bureaucracy should soon start strongly supporting the Fairtax because it will get the public off its neck, at least for another 50 years.
Reducing the size of government can only occur when the public learns to elect strict constitutionalists by the thousands. There must be a genuine rising up of the people in revolution against the size and the scope of our government. Nothing else will make a difference. Anything else is merely a milksop to keep the wheels greased and the bureaucracy growing.
Lawn mower sales-person!
LOL!
I don't believe that the "Hooters" girls are serving food in quite the same way that you are ...
Bet it was some cross-dressers who put them up to this.
They claim that GLBT is a genetic trait, not a lifestyle choice. We are born naked so all clothing/fashion is cultural conditioning. There is no genetic trait to wear the clothes of the OPPOSITE sex because genetically, there is no trait to wear any kind of clothes.
John Stossel is terrific. I love his books and his TV work.
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We don't serve criminals, politicians |
Everytime I read more about this crap I think we should go back to 1776 and start all over again.
There fixed it
Aside from the milk, they're just fat!
Breast feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests, since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
I remember an EEOC staffer in DC who was taken to court by the Feds because he was accused of stealing over a million dollars from the agency. Threw his butt in jail...along with the rest of him. That was a great day.
For the most part, though, the EEOC is a colossal waste of time and taxpayer money. What a joke is that agency.
It should be abolished and all of its employees should go look for real jobs - like waiting on tables at Hooter's!
I should hope not!
This looks like a scene from "Queerwolf".
LOL!
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If women want to push the EEOC to do this kind of thing on their behalf, they need to suck it up when it is done on the behalf of men.
Is that movie in the 'special' section of the store or is it one of those high quality Sci-Fi channel movies?
I would beg to differ. Women, even Hooter-girls, have a lower center of gravity than do men. Though possessing less upper body strength, they are less likely to become unbalanced by an awkward load. They are thus better suited to carrying trays of food and beer.
It`s like that Saturday night live skit... The ugly guy dressed nicely in a business suit asks the girl in his office out and she screams sexual discrimination and he gets fired. Then next day he is replaced by this hunky NFL star who asks her out wearing only his underwear and she can`t say yes fast enough.
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