When our friends do certain jobs for long enough, we can usually find ourselves hearing about at least some insider dirt about the industry they work in.
And while there’s a wealth of interesting information out there about what really goes on at construction sites or within law firms, the stories that tend to be the most shocking for us often concern the services we’re more likely to use in our day-to-day lives.
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That’s why it seems like we can never get enough of the warnings and secrets that come from fast food workers and clothing store employees, and it’s all the juicier for us when a place enjoys a squeaky-clean reputation .
That may not describe the company we’re about to hear about, but a story from one of their former employees serves as a good reminder of how satisfying it can be when one of your suspicions is confirmed.
In a TikTok calling for stories that only employees of large corporations would know, a woman named Anna James got the ball rolling with one of her own tales from Hollister.
As she put it, “I think it’s different now but back in the day, it was kind of messed up.”
And to understand what she’ll soon spill the beans about, we must first understand that when you worked at Hollister back then, you either handled inventory duties behind the scenes or you were a “model.”
And that wasn’t just a cute name for the employees who directly faced the public. According to James, the models for the company’s ads were directly pulled from this section of their workforce.
As such, those applying for a “model” position would be rated on a scale of one to 10 in attractiveness during the interview process.
And while James is unclear on whether the company’s subsequent control over employee appearances applied just to “models” or to all employees, it seems they were specific about what they wanted.
As she shared, hair and makeup had to appear natural and employees weren’t allowed to paint their nails. However, the most annoying part of this experience for her was the requirement to wear Hollister’s navy blue and white garb because this also included shoes.
In her words, “When I worked there, they only had the flimsy little flip flops and I just had to wear those on my shifts.”
And as we can see in the full video available here, one of the most unsavory parts of this back stock vs. model divide came into play during Black Friday.
As she explained, that’s when the management would choose the slimmest female employee and brought her out front to work with the (presumably hunky) shirtless male employees.
What made that so distasteful to the other employees is that this selected employee would be paid more than all of her peers purely because the management considered her more attractive than them.
In James’ words, “It was so messed up, it was always just on looks.”
