'But BusinessWeek spoke with seven former workers who say they were offended by what they called a highly sexual atmosphere at American Apparel. They told stories of senior managers who pursued sexual relationships with less senior colleagues and rewarded their favorites with promotions, company cars, and apartments. "It was a company built on lechery," says a former stock person. "I thought it was a male contemporary perspective on feminism, but it turns out to be just a gimmick," says another ex-employee. And another: "I made sure to stay away from the store when I knew [Charney] was coming into town. It's not one person -- he's aiming for all women.'
I generally have little patience with these kinds of feel-good PR-ish stories.
The negative Business Week article you referenced is doing the same thing as the source article, just the other way around. We can cherry pick negatives all day long, and the other side can do the same with positives.
Take the lessons learned from AA and make your company better. Just because Charney is a little nutty doesn't mean the entire company/model/approach is bad. In fact I think the business world could use more people like Charney with an open mind and free (if not overly-sexual) spirit.
Forcing sexual relationships on people who work for you (or forcing a reporter to watch you have sex and masturbate) is hardly "overly-sexual".
You said yourself that AA workers could not get the same money anywhere else... surely you don't think it's acceptable for Charney to ask his employees for sex in a situation where (according to you) he has so much power?
In general, I think good/legal vs. bad/illegal behavior is not just a simple sum of its parts where, say, 3 good deeds outweigh 1 rotten deed by 2. After all, when your neighbor turns out to be a child predator, are you going to say, oh well, that's ok because he's been a good church-going fella for the past 30 years?
If the sexual-harrassment allegations are true, then I hope the folks being harrassed get vindication in court and appropriate compensation for their damages. But I don't think anyone is arguing that AA is making lots of money because the boss sexually harrasses female workers. And even if you weigh AA's management in your moral balance and find it wanting, you can still learn something from the non-repulsive things that the company does.
If your high-school calculus teacher turns out to be a child predator, that doesn't invalidate everything you learned about calculus.
Charney doesn't deny taking part in any of the activities described in the article.
How is it an allegation when the guy himself admits it was true?
And sorry but your argument is typical straw-man. Of course I don't claim that all apparel ever manufactured disappears out of existence now that we found out about AA's lack of ethics. What's the point of assigning me a clearly retarded point of view just so you can refute it?
Obviously I don't think that it would invalidate an entire branch of mathematics if I found out that my calculus teacher was a pedophile. However, I would strongly object to an article profiling a him as ethical and using him as an example for others to follow, which is what the original post is doing.
You seem to be approaching this article, and the comments about it, as some sort of effete referendum on whether American Apparel is a good company.
Nobody here cares about American Apparel. In the context of news.yc, this article is only interesting in what lessons it might hold for other entrepreneurs. As has been said before, there are undoubtedly positive lessons and cautionary lessons.
Um, are you sure you're quoting the article properly?
FTA:
>Charney says all three women did substandard work and gave no indication before they left that they had felt harassed. Charney says he never engaged in any of the acts of which he is accused.
So 8 paragraphs in, the first time mentioning his "sexual crimes" in workplace culture, where it ALSO mentions his response, is a flat out denial. Where does he say he did this?
> After all, when your neighbor turns out to be a child predator, are you going to say, oh well, that's ok because he's been a good church-going fella for the past 30 years?
A good deed doesn't undo an evil deed, surely - but the opposite isn't true. All the bad deeds in the world doesn't make your good deeds less good.
It reminds me (as your comment did) of my basic premise on journalism over the last 20 years - which is that the business section is full of complete hosebags who've demolished the entire industry in the name of PR and capitalism.
For what it's worth, when I first stepped of the plane from Europe,
one of the things about America, that was most obvious, was the highly nonsexual atmosphere.
I've since grown completely accustomed to it, and now don't even notice it, except when I go back to Europe.
I don't think that's quite correct. The US is very sexualized, strip clubs, pornography, it's everywhere. But it's repressed sexuality. It's like the "war on drugs" - repression means that there's more money to be made.
'But BusinessWeek spoke with seven former workers who say they were offended by what they called a highly sexual atmosphere at American Apparel. They told stories of senior managers who pursued sexual relationships with less senior colleagues and rewarded their favorites with promotions, company cars, and apartments. "It was a company built on lechery," says a former stock person. "I thought it was a male contemporary perspective on feminism, but it turns out to be just a gimmick," says another ex-employee. And another: "I made sure to stay away from the store when I knew [Charney] was coming into town. It's not one person -- he's aiming for all women.'
I generally have little patience with these kinds of feel-good PR-ish stories.