By Quentin Fottrell
Iconic retailers American Apparel and Wal-Mart have recently become entangled in highly unflattering allegations with former female employees.
- Getty Images
American Apparel’s embattled founder and CEO Dov Charney is accused of sexual harassment. Former employee Irene Morales filed a suit in New York alleging sexual harassment, leading to these sensational newswire headlines; the judge in a court hearing earlier this week gave a clear signal that she will recommend the case to go arbitration instead. Another former employee Kimbra Lo, and three others, were named in a Los Angeles Superior Court filing.
In a decade-long case, retail giant Wal-Mart stands accused of sex-discrimination in the workplace. The Supreme Court is expected to decide soon on whether or not to certify a class-action lawsuit by six female employees at Wal-Mart. They allege Wal-Mart paid women less and passed them over for promotion 10 years ago.
But if the price of groceries is right or the salmon-colored skinny jeans fit, do you really care?
Lars Perner, a marketing professor in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, says that in this tough economic climate shoppers lack time and money, and often don’t pay attention to trade union issues, company lawsuits or scandals. “It takes a great deal of motivation to take people to go elsewhere. For example, for many people shopping at Wal-Mart is a way of life.”
Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter tells Pay Dirt it has long-held “strong” anti-discrimination policies: “This does not match the positive experiences so many other women have had at Wal-Mart.”
However, he was less sure when asked if this undermined the store’s efforts to re-brand itself as customer-friendly, especially in light of the kudos Wal-Mart received for its healthy food campaign that received the support of First Lady Michelle Obama. Doesn’t it tarnish those efforts? “I’m not sure how to answer your questions,” he says. “Customers rely on us for low prices, particularly when the economy is offering a lot of challenges to people.”
The world’s largest retailer has seen U.S. sales slip for seven consecutive quarters, but on Wednesday Wal-Mart U.S. CEO Bill Simon attributed this to miss-steps in pricing and product selection, and says it will return to low prices. Interestingly, according to USA Today, Simon also indicated that the store will mull over whether it needs to polish its image in the wake of the Supreme Court case.
In contrast, American Apparel has always focused more on its hipster image for multi-colored skinny jeans than bargain basement prices. Sexual harassments suits filed against CEO Dov Charney, have arguably been a big turn-off for its relatively optimistic and cash-rich young, middle-class demographic: kids in America.
Peter Schey, lawyer for Charney and American Apparel, tells Pay Dirt that he believes the allegations are designed to damage the company’s hipster brand. “Their salacious allegations are intended to generate adverse media coverage against American Apparel, but are contrived and entirely without foundation.”
Surely, it doesn’t help that American Apparel asks employees to sign confidential arbitration agreements?
Schey says these agreements are designed to protect the privacy interests of employees and actually encourage employees to report incidents of harassment and, he adds pointedly, “to prevent predatory plaintiffs and their attorneys from attempting to use the media to extort the company.”
Unlike Wal-Mart, young people go to American Apparel for the edgy vibe and cool designs rather than bargain basement prices, it’s arguably less immune to the series of scandalous allegations. Or is it? Perhaps he shouldn’t worry so much about the loyalty of American Apparel customers.
Jeff Galak, assistant professor of marketing at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, believes they have short memories: “American Apparel targets the youth market, which is less likely to read the news. They go there for fashion. Will it hurt? Probably a little bit. How large a section of its customers? My suspicion is not very large at all.”
By WebOsPublisher
Win32 Software by the derelict
Other Win32 software written by the derelict
All use standard Win32 source code and Windows libraries
(no MFC, ATL, or other TLA).
All are compiled using the MinGW compiler package. This is an excellent,
*FREE* compiler package which is based on the GNU compiler, but links to Windows
libraries. MinGW is available from: mingw.org/
All are FREEWARE for any and all uses!!
THE
SOFTWARE
ClearIcon – Resets background color on Desktop Icon text to
transparent
Last Update: February 06, 2007
ClearIcon is a utility for setting the background color
for Windows Desktop icon text to transparent, and selecting a foreground
color. It is primarily designed for execution from the command line,
but the user can manually create desktop icons to run the program from
Windows. The foreground color for for the icon text can be
specified either on the command line, or via the Windows Color Dialog (by
specifying -c on the command line). The foreground-color data is stored in
the Registry, so in normal operation the icon colors can be restored just
by re-running ClearIcon with no commandline arguments.
Note that under Windows XP, this program only works if you disable
drop-shadows on the desktop. The way to do this is:
Open Control Panel
Open System dialog
Select Advanced tab
Select Performance:Settings button
Select Visual Effects tab
Select Custom: radio button
Un-check Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
Download the
executable package here
ChgTags – Random Signature Generator
Last Update: June 24, 2009
This program selects a random line from a reference
file, and writes it to the specified Signature file. It
automatically updates the output Signature file at a user-specified
interval. A sample tagline reference file (containing derelict’s
favorite taglines) is included in the binary distribution file.
NOTE: With Version 2.00, released on 06/24/09, The timer is no longer
used. Instead, the user manually causes the tagline-file update by
left-clicking on the System Tray icon. While this reduces the
transparency of the program, it also eliminates the awful
wastefulness of the continuous file re-writes of the old method.
Download the
executable package here
CdTimer – SlideBar-based countdown timer
Last Update: December 24, 2010
This is a simple slider-based countdown timer.
It will display a “Time’s Up” message box when the timer expires.
The current time remaining is shown on the title bar, so it will remain
visible if the window is minimized. CdTimer stores its
MaxTimeScale and SecondsPerTickMark settings in a file called cdtimer.ini,
which is located in the place where cdtimer.exe was located. This
file will be created the first time CdTimer is run.
Updates:
12/24/10 – now has a Count Up mode, as well as normal CountDown.
12/04/06 – program now allows the user
to specify the sound file to be played when the timer expires.
At this point, only .WAV files are supported.
Download the
executable package here
Source Code for all of the preceding utilities
Last Update: May 17, 2007
Actually, this package implicitly also uses the Cygwin
software package, available from cygwin.com/. The Cygwin package emulates
many common Unix tools in a Windows console environment. If you
don’t feel like installing that rather complex package, you can edit the
makefile as necessary; the Cygwin tools that I use are:
rm – replace with DOS Del command
zip – replace with your own zip program as required
Download the
source code package here
PayDay
payday – a gag program
Last Update: August 24, 2007
This is an amusing and harmless program, based on an old program
by some unknown author. Click on the button to collect your
bonus check (if you can) !!
Download the executable package here
Download the source code here
Binary Clock
BinClock – a binary clock
Last Update: Oct 25, 2007
Yes, this is a binary clock, for those who want to tell time this way.
It supports several different image files with different LED images.
Download the executable package here
Download the source code here
7-segment and dot-matrix led-display modules
led7seg – 7-segment and dot-matrix led-display modules
Last Update: August 03, 2007
This is a module to draw realistic 7-segment led displays,
as well as a module to draw dot-matrix-led displays.
There is also a demo utility which shows how to use each of these
modules, along with their various options. Mind you, the demo
utility and the header files are the *only* documentation available
for this code, but they are pretty simple modules, so hopefully
this will suffice.
Download the
executable package or
source code here
RAINBOWS!!!
Programs to draw accurate rainbows, with variants
Last Update: January 26, 2007
These programs are variations on a rainbow simulator from the article
“Astronomical Computing”, from Sky & Telescope Magazine, February 1991.
The original program was written in 42 lines of BASIC for EGA
4-color video mode. That original BASIC program is included in
the source-code package.
I’ve improved (??) it into 470+ lines of C/win32 code which runs
in current screen resolution with resizeable windows. However,
other than improving resolution and allowing window resizing, I’ve
added no other normal Windows functionality; the point of the program
is still drawing correct rainbows!!
There are four versions of the program included in this package:
rainbow.exe – A virtually literal translation of
the original program and its algorithms.
rainbowt.exe – Runs the rainbow drawing task as a
separate thread, so updating continues even when the window is being
moved. So this package demonstrates a basic win32 multi-threading
application, as well as the rainbow.
rainbowb.exe – Draws a .BMP image behind the
rainbow. The image resizes with the window, as does the rainbow.
This demonstrates a technique for rendering resizeable bmp images
in win32 programs.
rainbowj.exe – Draws a .JPG image behind the
rainbow. The image resizes with the window, as does the rainbow.
This demonstrates a technique for rendering resizeable jpeg images
in win32 programs.
Download the executables package here
Download the source code package here
Ship’s Bells, Version 2.7 (Token program by others)
Last Update: May 18, 2011
Ship’s Bells version 2.7
This small program creates a Beautiful set of ship’s bells
that ring the half-hour and hour for you. An excellent program for
old (or new) sailors who miss the periodic watch reminder!!
You can choose which hours of the day the bells are active, as well as
a variety of other options.
Unfortunately, the company which distributed this program (Gulf Coastal
Software) no longer supports it, and in fact the web page isn’t publicly
accessible anymore. Soooo… I’ve brought it here instead, so your
ship’s bell urges can still be satisfied!!
Much later note:
Doug and Lori at Verizon.net sent me a document which explains how
the bell sequence works, as thanks for keeping this program available.
May this be educational for those of ye who don’t already know the
patterns!
Ship’s Bells explanation