Investigators found that when women wore a prosthetic suit designed to make them look obese, they were treated more rudely, and received fewer smiles and less eye contact from sales clerks at a Houston, Texas, shopping mall than when they shopped without the fat suit.
First of all, I call bullshit. Forget about the fact that it's likely that they had a preconceived theory and set out to 'prove' it. From my experience working in retail, on the average, the customers who give retail employees the most shit were overweight women. Don't ask me why. Let me stress "on the average," because obviously you'll always be able to find a stupid bitch in any weight bracket (and either gender, of course). Of course, I always treated every customer the same--with the same contempt and lack of respect.
But say it is true, and obese customers are treated worse than those with a quote/unquote "normal" weight. They fail to mention in the 'study' that the door swings both ways. Ask anyone in retail, they'll tell you. Customers tend to head toward more attractive employees to be rung up. Attractive waiters and waitresses make more in tips. My old manager at Spencer's, Dee (if you're reading this, you probably know her), told me once of a customer who demanded someone else ring her up because she thought Dee was "ugly," (the little bitch didn't get her way because Dee was the only one there).
The article makes it sound like retail employees are these evil, sadistic people. They do it all the time, especially around the holidays. They make it sound like all retail employees are on this constant power trip, and want to make your shopping experience as unpleasant as possible, when it's usually the customers who are unreasonable and overly demanding. Whatever. I don't deal with customers anymore, so screw them all.
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